Books like The Great Angel — picked by fans

Along with his other book, Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch, Russell Gmirkin puts forward compelling evidence to show that many of the most revered works of Jewish scripture were produced after the conquests of Alexander the Great, hundreds of years later than widely believed. Relationships between the Jewish Torah and the works of Plato have long been acknowledged by scholars, dating back to antiquity. Jews had long claimed that it was Plato who had derived his concepts from their writings, but here Gmirkin shows convincingly that the relationship goes the other way around. This realization has profound implications for our understanding of the origins of Judaism and Christianity.

The key to understanding the development of Judaism and Christianity is understanding how the problem of evil was interpreted in antiquity. There are many books on the subject, but Neil Forsyth’s is my personal favorite. His book is very thorough, covering the topic from ancient polytheistic Mediterranean mythology up through the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostics, and early Christianity. We can see that within religions of Semitic origin, there was fierce debate over whether evil was introduced by God himself, other heavenly beings such as angels or sons of God, by Satan, or by human beings. This led to debate over who the ruler of this world, the “material world,” really was. Was it God? Was it Satan? Was Satan actually God? These questions were of critical importance when Christianity emerged, and Forsyth’s book provides essential context.

Trobisch is a highly respected Net Testament scholar, and his insights are on full display in this short, but important, work. The exact origins of the New Testament have long been shrouded in mystery. Many people think of the New Testament as a collection of independent writings. Here Trobisch provides an important framework for understanding the New Testament as a whole. He reveals many important clues about who, when, how, and why the first edition of the New Testament was created. Trobisch shows the overall unity of the editorial features of the New Testament.

In this book Tom Dykstra provides an extensive background into the scholarship of the Gospel of Mark, explaining how so many people have misunderstood the work for so long and why other interpretations of the Gospel were sidelined. While my book reaches many similar conclusions to Dykstra’s regarding the relationship between the Pauline letters and Gospel of Mark, our approaches are very different and Dykstra provides important scholarly context.  

Just as Aryeh Kaplan helped me to read the Old Testament through Jewish (mystical) eyes, Amy-Jill Levine introduced me to a new understanding of Jesus and the New Testament, which once again completely revolutionized my understanding of the Bible and my appreciation for its wisdom.

Levine reminds us that Jesus lived and died as a Jew; his words and his teachings come alive in new and surprising ways when we take seriously his Jewish identity.

What I love about this book is not only how much it enriched my understanding of Jesus, but it also helped me to see how context is crucial for a careful reading of the Bible: knowing the social and historical background makes it so much easier to appreciate the spiritual wisdom in the sacred text.

In Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, James Carroll, a former Catholic priest turned journalist and novelist, delivers a powerful indictment of the politicized religion that from the time of Constantine the Great persecuted heretics, non-Romans, and, most of all, Jews. Carroll’s historical account is colorful and accurate, but what this book mostly does is exorcise a demon that plagued the author personally for years: his shared responsibility as a Catholic believer and official for an anti-Semitic tradition that helped generate the Holocaust. This is a stirring job of writing that looks forward to Carroll’s later work as a novelist, including his lovely take on the story of Abelard and Heloise, The Cloister (Anchor, 2019).     

Too often “Black-Jewish relations” focuses on Jewish engagement in the Black civil rights struggle, a largely one-sided political narrative. This book broadens that horizon in two ways.

First, it focuses on the Black experience and encounter with the other, rather than the Jewish one. Second, it explores the religious dimension that political discussions often ignore—that the Black experience with Jews and Judaism is as much rooted in religion as in politics.

In a conversational and, at times, anecdotal style, Telushkin describes what a compassionate, righteous life might look like.

There are chapters on good manners, charity, forgiveness, and humility along with considerations on anger, envy, hatred, and the instinct of revenge. Telushkin backs up his suggestions with references to Torah, Talmud, and Commentaries, and he includes some delightful stories to illustrate his points.

I can’t imagine a more comfortable guide to living conscientiously.

As a result of vast outpouring of important Jewish writing over the last century, it is difficult to navigate what is important and what should be included in the mainstream of Jewish life.

This is a curated collection of some of the most important writing and documentation of the period. I found it personally helpful to know what I should be reading and what I should be aware of. It also provides a helpful blueprint for those of us who are educators—what should be teaching in the years ahead to raise literate Jews of this generation, as well as those of other faith communities who may be interested in the trajectory of Jewish intellectual and religious life of this period.

No book has challenged me, frustrated me, comforted me, and transformed me more than A Course in Miracles.

What began as curiosity became a companion for decades. I've returned to it through success and failure, addiction and recovery, love and loss, certainty and confusion. Somehow it continues to meet me wherever I am. 

I've put the book down more than once. Sometimes out of frustration. Sometimes, because I needed to stop studying what it pointed toward and go live it. Yet I always found myself returning. It continually invites me to question the stories, fears, and identities I've mistaken for myself.

After all these years, it still feels less like a book I finished and more like a conversation that continues to unfold.