Via a suggestion through reading Bp. Rob Angus Jones, newest book, I’ve bought a copy of Abba Seraphim’s Flesh of Our Brethren. It is published on LuLu, which some of you know, I’m a huge fan of for producing much needed quality Indie research and resources. You can visit our own little kiosk by clicking here.

I’m only a third of the way through Flesh of Our Brethren, and so far I cannot reccomend it enough. Don’t let the typesetting put you off – Abba Seraphim has clearly done the research, and his presentation is both clear, readable, and well documented.

Flesh of Our Brethren focusses on the histories of three principal figures in our history, St. Mar Alvarez, Abp. Vilatte, and Bp. Ferrette, and their connections to the Syrian Church.

If you have already read Flesh of Our Brethren, and would like to share your own impressions, please do so in the comments below. Once I’ve finished it I might post a “proper” book review here.

I just finished re-reading my copy of Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. It is a humrous look at belief, religion, and what happens when it all goes horribly wrong. The story focuses on the Great God Om, and his companion the eighth prophet Brutha. Om is not so great anymore for a very simple reason, everyone thinks that they believe in him, but in reality they don’t. The story is about how Om gets his umph back – and becomes great again. But, its not that simple.

The story is humorous – its Pratchett’s style. But what I found rather ingeneous is how it looks under the rocks of “religion” – fundamentalism, power, money, manipulation, as well as straight forward real honest belief – forcing you to reflect on these things, perhaps from a slightly different (and admittedly irreverent) angle.

Small Gods is not a new book – its been around for a while – but it is one of those books that could very well benefit OC/IC folk because we’ve all seen incarnations of the Deacon Vorbis (a.k.a. “Lord Vorbis”), we’ve all seen individuals in our communities who, because of the nature of belief, how it can, and does “shift” people no longer believe in the God and his teaching, rather in the “structure” of faith, and its mechanisms. But we’ve also seen reflections of Brutha, the simple monk who just wants to tend his garden, but whose calling, and his gift of directness, and openess, takes him down a different path.

I’ve been reading Mother of God: a history of the Virgin Mary, by Miri Rubin this week. I bought it in part, based on a review in the Guardian a few weeks ago, and in part because of my ongoing battle with the PhD from Hell.

Rubin’s writing style is very readable. A good thing when you consider how challenging it is to chart the tangled history of our faith’s interest in Mary. Rubin presents her ideas in manageable vignettes focussed on particular ideas or historical elements – such as the council of Ephesus, Mary’s patronage of asceticism, etc. With her style and map of the text this ought to make a fantastic survey book for students of Mary, cult and devotion. Unfortunately it falls down on accuracy and attention to detail.

I should point out that I’m only now just over a third of the way through the text. However, I’m finding that it is not just one vignette that is academically wonky, but multiples of vignettes that just don’t carry the day (I’m therefore, not hopeful for an improved second half). Rubin’s coverage of the events surrounding Ephesus for example is thus far the lowest point. She suggests that the emergence of the devotional title Theotokos was a top down development, when in fact the evidence points to the exact opposite being true. Rubin mis-reports basic facts about the players in the controversy – Proklos was a bishop, not a priest. Her grasp on the fine points of the theology involved is equally misleading and sometimes outright wonky – her description of Nestorius’ Christology for example is way out of sync with even his own writings. To be fair to her, however, in this instance, it is easy to make the mistakes she made, and given the structure of her text (vignettes) trying to grab the essence of Nestorius’ teaching in a few short lines is a real challenge that I can’t imagine anyone doing successfully without misrepresenting him.

Reviewers described the book as “masterful”, “fascinating”, “breathtaking [. . .] scholarship”, and “intellectually exuberant”, I think that the project deserves to be recognised as a laudable attempt at chronicling 1500 years of Marian cult and devotion – but it falls far short of the dizzying heights of authority suggested by other reviewers.