Jerome Bertram

Brief as it is, this book could have benefited from a little tightening up. Stating and re-stating the obvious for pages at a time becomes wearisome at times; I occasionally wondered whether the author was writing for an audience of six-year-olds.

I was irritated by the total lack of citations for quotes (except those taken from Scripture) and alienated by the claim, stated as bald fact on p. 78, of the exact wording of the titulus crucis in Hebrew. Considering that said wording appears to be unattested and may not have been in Hebrew at all, but Aramaic, the naked assertion that the initial letters of the words spell "YHWH" seems a bit much. It would, of course, be awfully nice if they did... but it would be nice too if authors could let on where they were getting their facts, real or alleged.… (mehr)