Jesus the Son of Man

This book by Kahlil Gibran was an absolute treat. Having re-read his most famous work last night, I became curious about his other stuff and found this for 73p on Kindle, so immediately bumped it to the top of my to-read list - and I have not been disappointed.

   It's difficult to decide whether to classify this as poetry or short stories given the style & nature of the content. Basically what the book is constituted of is several dozen vignettes of various people's reactions to, recollections of, and reflections on Jesus of Nazareth; these range from his disciples (eg. James & John, Matthew, Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene gets three separate chapters alone) to his erstwhile foes (most notably the high priests Annas & Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate) to random strangers (eg. a Persian philosopher, a Babylonian astronomer, a Greek poet, and my personal favourite "Ahaz the portly").* The attitudes presented range from worshipful awe to confusion to hostility - there is even one interestingly neutral perspective. Gibran seeks to tread the known and possible ground of the biblically-orthodox Jesus faithfully, making no theological points but as a work of socio-historical imagination driving home the pressing question - "how would you have related to him?"**

   A very readable, vibrant & faithful book. Highly recommended for those curious about what we can say or imagine about Jesus without resorting to outright fancy, be they Christian like Kahlil Gibran was or not.

* A couple of lacunae I would have liked to have seen filled would be Pharisees and the beneficiaries of his miracles, lepers & cripples & demoniacs etc, but I suppose you can't have everything, and admittedly Gibran is already doing a great deal here.

** Indeed, the final chapter, "a man from Lebanon [nineteen centuries later]" is Gibran's own reflections on meeting Jesus himself through the life of faith.

the Prophet

This book is the most famous work by Kahlil Gibran - I've read it for this blog before, hence the shortness of this post: that link goes back to my original post about it as I don't really have anything to add to what I said there* so go read that if you want to know about this brilliantly-wise & beautifully-written poetic work.

* Except one thing - the edition I read last time was a stolen Everyman hardback which since, in somewhat neat circularity, has been stolen from me (well, I lent it to someone, I forget who, but they kept it) so this time was reading my replacement, a fairly unattractively-formatted paperback with Gibran's own artwork interspersed with the sections, though I'll admit this didn't add much to the reading experience. I'd be interested to see his artwork in person, mind, as I'm sure it's a lot more impressive when it's not an A5 black&white copy.

the Prophet

This book, an exquisite masterpiece by Kahlil Gibran, is ostensibly poetry,* but reads like some variety of holy scripture - which is sort of the point. It opens with (you guessed it) a prophet, Almustafa, who has been living in the city of Orphalese for twelve years - but it is his time to leave, a ship is coming to return him to his birthplace. He dithers slightly on the way to the harbour, reflecting upon the time he has spent here and the pain of departure, and as he does so, the people of the town see him going and rush out to both say farewell and implore him to stay.

   Of course, he cannot stay, but the crowds stir Almustafa's heart to allow him to linger long enough to impart some of the wisdom he has (found? realised? built?) while living among them. Thus lays out the bulk of the book, two-or-three-page chapters in which a citizen of Orphalese asks him to speak on a particular topic,** which he then does - expounding in concisely enormous, universally everyday, ambiguously particular, incisively encouragingly challengingly wise terms upon that topic. Gibran's writing here is sublime - the choice of words, structure of phrasing, even layout of the whole book, emulates something akin to the Q'ran (at least English translations of it which I have read parts of) or the Judeo-Christian wisdom books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes - and yet the content of this wisdom does not seem clearly derived from any one specific religion, but seems to draw on all of their overlaps, as well as their overlaps with earthly wisdom and the highest orders of philosophy and ethics, to develop a point of view for the prophet that reads like something truly transcendent and fundamental. And yet, beautifully, it is not difficult to read! His poetic imagery is at times dense, and as I said earlier, regularly ambiguous - but far from impenetrable, as the actual text is grounded very much in common social experience. Anyway, the prophet does a shortish super-deep spiel about the twenty-six topics listed (see **) below, then gives a longer farewell speech which digs up some stirring reminders to both his crowd and the reader of the importance of wisdom, of heeding it, of remembering it, of the ease with which it is forgotten and the brokenness that often ensues when it is; he then gets on his boat and goes home.

   This is a book I wager almost anyone could read and feel both deeply affirmed and challenged by - and is that not the point of wisdom?*** All in all, this is an utterly astounding little book: the pages become papyrus as you turn them, such is its ancient sagacity - all the more incredible when you realise it was written in New York in the early 20th century. (Whatever floats your own boat, but if you're going to read this I'd strongly recommend doing so in a single sitting under a tree in nice weather - I mean, that's a great way to read most things, but particularly this.)

* Weirdly, I acquired this in the same manner, and from the same person, albeit from a different bookshop and about a year later, as the last poetry book I read. I've asked them to stop doing this as it's becoming a bizarre habit, as amusing and meaningless a symbolic gesture as it may be.

** In order: love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

*** [Christian-blogger-footnote]: well... no. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", and while quests in search of a universal truth may well often take us there, it is not the same thing from a human perspective. If fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not its conclusion or outcome, that implies that any genuine wisdom cannot be attained or anchored without first fearing the Lord - certainly the wisdom of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Jesus take us to this point. (It is interesting to note that Kahlil Gibran was himself a Christian.) But human wisdoms have developed in the surrounding social, cultural and historical spaces as Lord-wisdom, and because Lord-wisdom, being the God-defined nature of life and reality, holds its water as wisdom, we tend to find that many human derivatives of wisdom, from Buddhist philosophy to complex secular constructivist ethics, share a fair amount of surface content. This is unsurprising, if God exists then he defines what is good, and obviously people prefer what is good, so he forms a gravitational centre to those ideas (see Robert M. Adams on this) - but a human seeking of 'goodness' in an abstracted form that does not have an intentional and humble pursuit of God at its core seems, frankly, flimsy. Yes, it may well make people wiser, happier, more moral, but without a personal God of love as its foundation and centre (alongside a worked-out understanding of theology surrounding one's relationship to that God and to a reasonable degree the nature of that God's love), this wisdom, however much it may seem to be approaching universal truth, is like an incredibly beautiful chair that you can never sit it because it can't hold the weight of a person.