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Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature by S.K. Robisch (University of Nevada Press)
Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature presents a new perspective on the role of the wolf in American literature. The wolf is one of the most widely distributed canid species, historically ranging throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere. For millennia, it has also been one of the most pervasive images in human mythology, art, and psychology. Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature examines the wolf's importance as a figure in literature from the perspectives of both the animal's physical reality and the ways in which writers imagine and portray it. Author S. K. Robisch examines more than two hundred texts written in North America about wolves or including them as central figures. From this foundation, he demonstrates the wolf's role as an archetype in the collective unconscious, its importance in our national culture, and its ecological value. Robisch, former professor of American Literature and American Studies, takes a multidisciplinary approach to his study, employing a broad range of sources: myths and legends from around the world, symbology, classic and popular literature, films, the work of scientists in a number of disciplines, human psychology, and field work conducted by himself and others. By combining the fundamentals of scientific study with close readings of wide-ranging literary texts, Robisch analyzes the correlation between actual, living wolves and their representation on the page and in the human mind. He also considers the relationship between literary art and the natural world, and argues for a new approach to literary study, an ecocriticism that moves beyond anthropocentrism to examine the complicated relationship between humans and nature.
Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature is not a book about wolves; it is a book about wolf books. Robisch is concerned with the study of mythic and scientific approaches in literature that have put imaginary wolves into the minds of the most seasoned, clinical thinkers. Many of these images are possessed of a power equal to the scapegoat, the minotaur, or the phoenix and some are as ancient. They prompt the most and least responsible actions human beings take toward predatory animals, preservation efforts, and the politics of habitat. The focus of this book is on litera­ture. The way we read and write about an animal will affect our behavior toward that animal, as the way we read and write about anything else does. To this end, the ghost wolves that Robisch examines – the wolves of the imagination – must be weighed against real wolves. We don't want fantasies about race, class, or gender dictating ethical and political decisions.

Robisch says that wolves, generally speaking, have strong voices. They tend to have complicated personalities and social enclaves. As the wilderness in which they live is increasingly relegated to shopping malls that resemble parks and parks that resemble shopping malls, a human price is also paid. It's easy for us to grow willing to accept facsimiles that replace with sterile, self-congratulatory representations the potentially life-changing truths found in physical reality. Also, unlike big cats or bears, wolves are the progenitors of a favored pet, which places them in a curious position vis-à-vis wilderness myth and domestic culture formation. They're unfortunately conducive to symbolic figuring in the human mind. We can point to our dogs and say that we molded them out of lupine clay.

Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature offers a case for the wolf’s importance as a figure in literature because of its importance as an animal in the real world. First, it demonstrates that literature does not realize its importance only in terms of human race, class, and gender, however important those issues are. Literature also depends upon nonhuman subject matter that authors have always tried to articulate. Second, the argument proves with a preponderance of evi­dence the connection between a literature about at least one animal and our be­havior regarding that animal's place in the world. Perhaps a book about wolf books will amalgamate the many efforts to understand, represent, and imagine the wolf, and so clarify in some way the relationship between its reality and its mythology. Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature makes seven major claims to that end.

Part I offers a model that accounts for the wolf as it appears both in the world and in books. This is the rubric for the entire study. Given its most detailed atten­tion in the first chapter, it adds up to the first claim: that the wolf as a mystical force in the human mind merits status as a major literary figure – infusive, correc­tive, allegorical, and ill used – that must be considered, along with other animals, in view of its physical reality.

The next claim of Part I is that considerations of wolves take on regional dis­tinction, color, language, and form, especially regarding colonial and imperial human ideas about territorialism and law.

Part II is a mythic historiography. It asserts the ubiquity of the wolf, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, and considers the means by which the image of the wolf in the Indo-European mind was transported across the Atlantic and collided as violently as any military event with the native nations of North Amer­ica. The third of Robisch’s claims is as follows: The American wolf myth is typical of most other American myths in that it is largely borrowed and reified from other cultures, rather than untraceable or original.

Part II also concerns the bioregional and mythic syntheses that result in sev­eral kinds of elemental wolf stories. Wolf myths incorporate a vast land range of the species over time that is rivaled among mega fauna only by humans (chapter 9), but they also are connected in literature to the expanse of the sea (chapter 7), the sky through astrocartography (chapter 8), and the symbolic landscape of our dreams in sleep and fantasy (chapter 7). And so, the fourth major claim of Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature is that the alchemical mixture of such stories should stand by itself as proof of the wolf’s iconic power, its role as an archetype in the collective unconscious, and its importance to literature by way of its import in the world.

Part III takes a position that might be uncomfortable at first. The fifth major claim Robisch makes is that race, class, and gen­der are subcategories under the enveloping limits of the biosphere, which precedes and dictates the terms of those three cultural designators. In Part III we see werewolves as a race, children as a class, and the she-wolf as a gender construct. This is less to showcase these anthropocentric categories than to examine how they have bearing on our understanding of nonhuman catego­ries, of course with the wolf in focus. One way he examines these constructs is through a particular brand of myth that presents itself again and again in the wolf story: the myth of the twins. Shape-shifting, twin gods, hybridization, and wolf brothers all run through wolf stories in a leitmotif of doubling. The image of the twins is significant because, first, it is perhaps more readily recognizable as a myth or archetype than is the wolf. Through the werewolf, it serves as a catalyst to the wolf myth's own accrual of energy. In some ways the wolf myth rides the coattails of the twins into the broader mythology. The twins motif is also significant because its empowerment of the wolf myth more sharply defines the psyche's ambivalent responses to wolves.

In chapter 14 (on children's literature) he presents the lives of hypothetical fra­ternal twins in Minnesota, named Paul and Minnie, in order to consider how children in America might grow up to form the ideas they have about wolves. Further proof of the wolf’s force as a foundational mythic image appears its gendered symbolism, in this case the figure of the she-wolf, the mother of war­riors and wolf packs.

During Part III, Robisch interrupts the race/class/gender chapters with a close reading that ecocritically subsumes and synthesizes all three of these categories. Using Jack London's White Fang consistently and sharply indicates matters of race (especially white-vs.-proto-Indian stereotypes), young adult literature (that is, a literature appealing to a certain class's sensibilities about nature), and gender politics (for example, London's own masculinity as well as his character construction), all in the context of colonization (the mining of gold and building of empire by dogsled in the far north). The resultant claim is that White Fang's condition as an ‘opposite’ of The Call of the Wild is easily and mistakenly coupled with the assumption that it has a happy ending. The plot of decline in White Fang therefore synthesizes four of his major claims toward the greater argument about the wolf's significance as a figure both real and literary, not exclusively metaphoric, in the formation of American reading, behavior, and policy.

The seventh and final major claim that runs throughout Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature is as follows: All of the components used in framing an argument are affected by that argument, and this must include any ecological components. When we use an ani­mal as a metaphoric or iconic figure for an argument, however, too often the concerns in liberal arts studies have been with the argument's ‘forward’ focus or anthropocentric goal, and those concerns usually dismiss or diminish the animal quite literally being used. Therefore, when the she-wolf of Rome suckles Romu­lus and Remus, in one ‘gendering’ of our reading, we might focus on the role of mother to the conquerors, the feminine being used merely as life support for a long-term imperialistic male rule. This certainly will affect the way we take into account the myth's cultural context, how we might reread and remytholo­gize it today, or whether or not our culture will in time revise that myth as operant to our own collective identity. Any ‘scientific’ effort at ‘demythologizing’ is certainly doomed to, if not failure, then to that self-correction for which the sciences are famous. To the tra­ditional patriarchy of university and industrial scientific cultures over the eras, myth has been a kind of thorn in the analytical side, a powerful proof of the sepa­rated Two Cultures. We don't, critic, poet, and biologist alike, demythologize. Myths follow a more complicated life cycle. Because we remythologize, some myths might fade in energy, fold into other myths, or morph into new shapes with which our names have to catch up, but when we put a wolf in a story, that story no longer belongs exclusively to us.

This book is a very significant contribution to literary scholarship. obisch has pursued a de­manding path, encompassing the fields of biology, literature, history social and cultural theory, myth, folklore, and popular media in his book. In doing so, Robisch raises ecocriticism to a new level of interdisciplinary rigor and range. His wolf book should become a new model for the study of animals in literature. What Robisch has produced is the alpha wolf book among a surprisingly large number of wolf-related books, a work of impressive scope and learning. – Glen Love, author of Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment

This book offers a paradigm of ecocriticism that is based on thorough knowledge of its sub­ject (both the literature and the animal that inspired it, and that draws on science and at every step considers the implications that our stories have on our relationship with the actual world, or in this case, with real wolves. Robisch takes seriously the 'eco' in ecocriticism, in­cluding and foregrounding information from the natural sciences. He takes care to develop a critical ethos that is not only thoroughly informed by pertinent biology but by respect and honor for the voice and life of its nonhuman subject. The book remains intellectually inter­esting throughout, not just in arguing its key points but in the smaller and almost incidental claims as well. – Ian Marshall, author of Peak Experiences: Walking Meditations on Literature, Nature, and Need

In Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature Robisch astutely analyzes the correlation between real wolves and their portrayals in literature and in the human psyche; then he does the same with the complicated relationship between humans and nature. We concur with the above reviewer: He takes the ‘eco’ in ecocriticism quite seriously.

The Nature of Love by Dietrich von Hildebrand, translated by John F. Crosby with John Henry Crosby (St. Augustine’s Press)

In this work, von Hildebrand has given us what – in my view – is an unprecedented reflection upon the role of love in its several forms, with especial attention to the love of man and woman.... In addition to its own intrinsic value as – in my judgment – the most significant contribution of the past century to the thematic of love, the present work with its helpful introduction may be taken as an invitation to further discussion with other philosophical traditions, such as those of Kantian, Augustinian and Thomistic provenance. – from the Preface by Kenneth L Schmitz

Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) was born in Florence, and studied philoso­phy under Adolf Reinach, Max Scheler, and Edmund Husserl. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1914. He distinguished himself with many publications in moral philosophy, in social philosophy, in the philosophy of the interpersonal, and in aesthetics. He taught in Munich, Vienna, and New York. In the 1930s he was one of the strongest voices in Europe against Nazism.

Early on von Hildebrand distinguished himself as a thinker with an unusual understanding of human love. His books in the 1920s on man and woman broke new ground and stirred up contro­versy. Towards the end of his life he wrote a foundational treatise on love, The Nature of Love, which he regarded as his most important philosophical work. One sees von Hildebrand at work in the book as an eminent Christian philosopher; the chapter on caritas explores in a profound and original way the difference between eros and agape, and shows the place of love of neighbor among the categories of human love.

In his earlier work von Hildebrand explored the affective life of persons; in The Nature of Love he argues more forcefully than any previous philo­sopher for the affective dimension of love. In addition, von Hildebrand is led into new dimensions of the human person, as when he explores areas of personal subjectivity that he did not have the occasion to explore in his ethical writings. He shows that the desire to be loved by the person whom one loves has nothing to do with selfishness; he shows that this desire to be loved and so to be united with the other person is itself a kind of self-donation to the other. Von Hildebrand resists the altruism that claims that one is selfless towards the beloved person only by willing the good of the other in such a way as to be indifferent to being loved in return. On the other hand, he equally resists the claim that the happiness of the one who loves is the primary motive of love. Von Hildebrand vindicates the radi­cally other-centered direction of love, while avoiding the pitfall of a depersonalized altruism.

As told in the introduction by translator John F. Crosby, among Catholic philosophers in the past century, there arose a remarkable set of diverse thinkers who shared in the new explorations in phenomenology and yet reunited these with the more traditional concern for metaphysics. Among them, von Hildebrand is distinguished by the breadth and intensity of his reflections on the affective dimension of our human nature. His works on the subject are manifold, but they come together in The Nature of Love on the essence of love. Having noted the radical difference between the subjectively satisfying and the other modalities of value, he presented a subtle reflection on the diverse forms of value-response. In a way that is unprecedented in philosophical literature in its depth and clarity, von Hildebrand spells out the affective character of value that transcends our humanity, and calls for a value-response by which we are raised above our own capability in the realization of the very essence of love. Yet, while this carries us beyond ourselves, our experience with value does not end there. In his instructive introduction, Crosby in The Nature of Love draws readers’ attention to a further relation that completes our experience of value. It is that whereby "a certain interior dimension of personal self-possession...comes to light," and that constitutes "the objective good for a person," and with it the fulfillment of the person in and through love. This recovery of the value of the person in and through love discloses a third kind of importance in the domain of love, a kind which is neither simply subjectively satisfying, nor important exclusively in itself but a love that is the flourishing of the person in the supremely transcendent value of love.

When the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time. – Joseph Cardinal Itatzinger

I would almost say that the [artistic] genius of Adolf von Hildebrand has been inherited by his son, the author, in the form of a philosophical genius. In fact in this work the author gives evidence of a rare talent to draw from the deep sources of pheno­menological intuition, to analyze with intelligence and precision what he has seen and to express it conceptually in a most rigorous way.... We are simply astonished at the incomparably intimate knowledge that the author has of the various formations of affective consciousness and of the objective correlates of affective consciousness. – Edmund Husserl on Dietrich von Hildehrand's doctoral dissertation

Of Dietrich von Hildebrand: I have always been impressed with the fullness of his Christian wisdom, his profound philosophical intelligence, and his rich culture. – Fr. W. Norris Clark

Dietrich von Hildebrand was the most important Catholic philosopher in Europe between the two world wars. – Louis Bouyerer

The Nature of Love constitutes a major development of the Christian personalism that von Hildebrand represents, a major development in the understanding of what love is, and a re-starting point in the discussion between different philosophical traditions. And it is also a masterpiece of phenomenological investigation; not since Max Scheler's work on love have the resources of phenomenology been so fruitfully employed for the understanding of what love is and what it is not.

Tantric Techniques by Jeffrey Hopkins, edited by Kevin Vose (Snow Lion Publications)
Tantric Techniques offers a complete system of Tibetan Buddhist tantric meditation that details the process of transforming oneself through the step-by-step use of the imagination. Prolific author Jeffrey Hopkins offers a contemporary Western perspective on the practice of deity yoga, based on his study and practice of these techniques.
Deity yoga is the meditative practice of imagining oneself as an ideal being fully endowed with compassion, wisdom, and their resultant altruistic activities. The idea is that by imagining being a Buddha, one gets closer to actually achieving Buddhahood.

Tantric Techniques offers a complete system of Tantric meditation, comparing the views of three seminal Tibetan authors on deity yoga, and on issues such as how to safeguard against psychological inflation and how to use negative emotions on the path.

Across the vast reaches of the Tibetan cultural region in Inner Asia Buddhism is practiced in many forms by a plethora of sects and sub-sects. Though their systems vary widely, they agree on dividing their practices into basically two styles, Sūtra and Mantra – also called Tantra – and all offer reasons why the Mantra system is supe­rior. Based on Indian expositions of the greatness of Mantra, many scholar-practitioners catalogued and creatively developed these explanations, which came to be the means through which they per­ceived and ordered the otherwise overwhelmingly diverse forms of practice inherited from Buddhist India.

Most of the presentations of the distinctiveness of Mantra employ multiple formats for demonstrating its greatness, but one Ti­betan scholar boils these down into a single central distinguishing feature. Whether or not one accepts that deity yoga is the central distinctive feature of Mantra, it is an im­portant feature, and since meditation on emptiness is said to be the ‘life’ of the Sūtra and Mantra paths and thus also of deity yoga, Tantric Techniques initially presents how Sūtra and Mantra describe the practice of reflecting on emptiness and then of relating to appearances. As a basic theme of Great Vehicle Buddhism, the compatibility of empti­ness and appearance offers a window through which Sūtra and Mantra can be not just glimpsed but felt in imagination. Using a meditation manual by the Fifth Dalai Lama, Hopkins explores the process of this central meditation emphasizing its implications regarding its relation with appear­ances. It is in this issue that one of the prime differences between these two systems lies.

These two models – Sūtra and Mantra – are viewed by some Ti­betan scholars as progressively more profound techniques of spiri­tual development in what, by the style of presentation, seems to be a harmonious development. The gradualis­tic harmonious approach, while being valuable in showing the con­tinuity between the two traditions, tends to obscure the innovative profundity of tantric meditation that may be experienced as a solu­tion to a spiritual crisis centered on the appearance of pheno­mena. Hopkins says it is possible that the Sūtra model of meditation on emptiness, when it is implemented in effective practice, induces a problem-situation that is resolved in the tantric model of medita­tion.

In order to discuss that possibility, Tantric Techniques explores the Sūtra and Mantra models of meditation in considerable detail so that the discussion does not become an exercise in mere abstraction. Therefore, after the Sutra model of meditation on selflessness and subsequent experience of appearances is given, the tantric model of meditating on oneself as an ideal being, a deity, is presented in detail in the second chapter through the example of a particular Action Tantra.

At the end of the second chapter the theory of paradigm change is introduced as a way to reveal the necessity for the development of the tantric model. The Sūtra and Mantra models of meditation are investigated with the aim of exposing a possible crisis that requires an individual to move to the tantric model; the analysis is ‘historical,’ not in the sense of charting and reflecting on centuries of development in schools of Buddhism, though undoubtedly such happened, but of an individual's progress in one life or over many lives.

In the third chapter of Tantric Techniques, in order to convey a sense of the profundi­ty of the tantric enterprise – the enormity of its claims of effective­ness – Carl Jung's exposition of the grave consequences of positive and negative inflation is considered. His insights constitute warnings against doing just what the tantrics advise – identifying with a deity. Then, to present the full breadth of the path-structure of a tantric system, the next three chapters deal with the compli­cated series of practices following imagination of oneself as a deity in Action Tantra. Powerful techniques for concentrating the mind and inducing realization are implemented with the aim of de­autonomizing psychological and perceptual complexes.

In Part Two, presentations of the distinctiveness of Mantra from three Tibetan savants are considered, the underlying agenda being to highlight the plurality of approaches in two of these expo­sitions in contrast to the emphasis on the sole feature of deity yoga found in the highly rationalistic writings of the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century founder of the Ge-luk-pa order, Tsong-kha­pa Lo-sang-drak-pa. His system is thereby put into historical context; the radical nature of his distilling the distinctive essence of Mantra down to the single central feature of deity yoga becomes clear through juxtaposing two earlier multifaceted approaches. Part Three is concerned with Bu-tön's presentation of nine tra­ditional ways of dividing the tantras into four groups – Action, Per­formance, Yoga, and Highest Yoga – and Tsong-kha-pa's critical acceptance of only two of them. In conclusion Hopkins makes the suggestion that these grids for organizing tantras in classes are self-aggrandizing and to a large extent obscure the psychological tech­niques employed to effect a transmutation of mind and body.

Jeffrey Hopkins has made a major contribution to deepening understanding of Tibetan Buddhism, had access to some of the greatest contemporary Tibetan teachers, but – most important of all – he has, over the years, steadily tried to put what he has learned into practice. – The Dalai Lama

Tantric Techniques gives serious Buddhism practitioners a dynamic sense of the potential of the human mind for self-transformation through step-by-step use of the imagination.

What Your Patients Need to Know about Psychiatric Medications, 2nd edition by Robert H. Chew, Robert E. Hales & Stuart C. Yudofsky (American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.)

Authored by a pharmacist and two psychiatrists, What Your Patients Need to Know about Psychiatric Medications is a large format book designed to provide patients with accurate, easily understood information about the drugs clinicians prescribe: anti-anxiety medications, medications for insomnia, antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, ADHD medications, cognitive enhancers, and, new to this edition, medications to treat alcohol dependence. Authors include Robert H. Chew, Pharm.D., Psychiatric-Pharmacist Specialist in Sacramento; Robert E. Hales, M.D., M.B.A., Joe P. Tupin Endowed Chair and Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of California-Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento; and Stuart C. Yudofsky, M.D., D.C., Irene Ellwood Professor and Chairman of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at The Methodist Hospital in Houston.

For each drug, a three-to-five page handout which can be printed from the accompanying CD-ROM includes facts like generic availability, dosing instructions, side effects, possible adverse reactions, drug interactions, overdose alerts, and considerations such as missed dosages or whether to take the medication with food. This second edition has been updated to reflect new medications and enhanced understanding of familiar ones. The new section on drugs for alcohol dependence covers Antabuse (disulfiram), Campral (acamprosate), ReVia (naltrexone), and Vivitrol (naltrexone injection). New separate coverage of stimulants and nonstimulants for ADHD includes handouts for off-label use of Catapres (clonidine) and Tenex (guanfacine). What Your Patients Need to Know about Psychiatric Medications also covers other medications introduced since the first edition: Daytrana (methylphenidate topical patch), Emsam (selegiline), Invega (paliperidone), Lunesta (eszopiclone), Lyrica (pregabalin), Pristiq (desvenlafaxine), Razadyne (galantamine, previously Reminyl), Rozerem (ramelteon), and Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine). Recent FDA warnings regarding antidepressant and atypical antipsychotics are also reflected.
Aimed at health care providers, the book provides essential information about all the major classes of psychiatric medications as well as more detailed information about specific medications. When prescribing a medication for one of their patients, they may wish to photocopy or download from the CD-ROM both general information about the class of medi­cation and more detailed information about the specific agent. Each medication is presented in a standard format. The various sections and a brief discussion of each are as follows:

  • Brand Name: The trade name the manufacturer has given the medication for marketing to the consumer.
  • Generic Name: The chemical or pharmaceutical name of the medication.
  • Available Strengths: The dosages and availably formulations.
  • Available in Generic: Whether the medication is available in a generic form.
  • Drug Class: The classification of the medication (e.g., tricyclic antidepressant), applicable to a group of medications similar in chemical formulation, mode of action, or general uses.
  • General Information: An overview of the medication, including how it works, why it was developed, and its general advantages and disadvantages.
  • Dosing Information: Concise information about how the medication is prescribed, including dosage forms and strengths, when it should be taken, and how doses should be increased.
  • Common Side Effects: The most common side effects noted during clinical trials and in clinical practice (Because additional side effects may occur, patients should be instructed to report these to their physicians.).
  • Adverse Reactions and Precautions: Cautionary advice concerning the medication itself and other med­ications to be avoided.
  • Use in Pregnancy and Breastfeeding: Whether the medication should be taken by women who are or may become pregnant and women who are breastfeeding, as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administra­tion's (FDA) categorization of the drug (A, B, C, D, or X).
  • Possible Drug Interactions: Other medications that may be of concern or that should be avoided alto­gether when taking the medication in question.
  • Overdose: General information concerning the signs and symptoms of overdose and what to do if someone takes too much of the prescribed medication.
  • Special Considerations: Special considerations to be aware of with the medication in question, including concise review of the medication discussed and a summary of its unique advantages and disadvantages; warnings; and general advice concerning what to do if a dose is missed, whether the tablet or capsule may be cut or crushed, whether the medication should be taken with food, and how to store the medications.
  • Notes: Space provided for the patient to write down 1) side effects that the patient may have experienced so he or she can discuss them with the physician at the next visit and 2) questions the patient or a family member may have about the medication, such as dosing, side effects, or potential drug interactions with existing medications.

Essential, accurate, and easy to understand, What Your Patients Need to Know about Psychiatric Medications provides all the information psychiatrists are likely to need to give their patients. The CD makes duplication of parts of the volume easy.

In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity by Hal Taussig (Fortress Press)

The radical origins of Christianity in the performance of new social identities –

How did Christianity begin?

Hal Taussig, Pastor of Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church in Philadelphia and Visiting Professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, a founding member of the SBL Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World, in In the Beginning Was the Meal brings a wealth of scholarship to bear on that question. He shows that in the Augustan age, common meals became the sites of dramatic experimentation and innovation regarding the performance of social roles and relationships, challenging expectations regarding gender, class, and status. Rich comparative material and rigorous ritual analysis reveal that it was in just such a swirl of experimentation that the early Christian assemblies, with their ‘love feasts’ and ‘supper of the Lord,’ were born.

The ironic affirmation of In the Beginning Was the Meal's title concerning Christian beginnings cannot be overlooked. It is, Taussig says, a complete contradiction in terms. The title and the book itself do propose a hypothesis for the beginnings of Christianity, even while they undermine the idea of Christian origins itself. But a meal can never be a pure beginning, even as Christianity's beginnings can never be pinpointed. A meal is always a result of a complex set of prior events: food preparation, relationships, invitations, and locales, to name a few. To assert that Christianity – or anything – began with a meal begs too many questions.

Yet many things are generated at meals – ideas, additional relationships, new intentions, more communal fabric. The value in conceiving Christian beginnings in terms of the meals that first- and second-century ‘Christians’ ate is that it taps a generative social practice for early Christians while avoiding much of the pretense of previous proposals about how Christianity began. Like a meal itself, In the Beginning Was the Meal assumes a complex combination of ongoing dynamics, prior initiatives, social interaction, previous histories, overlapping ideas, and ambiguous intentions at work in the process of Christian identities emerging. It is not possible to account for Christian beginnings by identifying who the founding figure was, what the essential beliefs were, what the guiding social principles were, or what transformative event triggered it all. What is done here is the mapping of one of the primary social practices during Christianity's emergence: the meals that they shared. Instead of producing a definitive origin, In the Beginning Was the Meal analyzes the intersection of this important social practice and early Christian literature. It does not abandon the task of thinking about how Christianity began, but rather seeks to understand a range of early Christian identities as they partially appeared within one of the major social practices of the first two centuries, the Hellenistic meal.

Hal Taussig makes the astonishing – and convincing – argument that Christianity as we know it came to be shaped when Christians gathered together for meals. These were the times when they composed and sang hymns to Christ, told gospel stories of Jesus, and read letters from absent apostles or fellow communities in other cities. In the Beginning Was the Meal is required reading for anyone who wants to see how the simple practice of people dining together could initiate a bold social experiment that brought together men and women, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free in the name of their God, Christ. – Karen L. King, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Harvard Divinity School

In the Beginning Was the Meal is a cutting-edge monograph shedding new light on the social context of early Christian gatherings, illuminating the origins of Christianity itself, and drawing important implications as well for the practice of Christian community today. A result of deep analysis of research material, the book reveals that it was this kind of a community of experimentation that the early Christian assemblies were born.