The Good Book-and Others-in '73

Wall Street was bearish but Bibles were bullish in the year just past. Two new ecumenical editions of the Revised Standard Version appeared: the New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (Oxford; $11.95) and the Common Bible (Collins; $7.95). Each includes the RSV'S 1971 revision of the New Testament, and carries Apocryphal and "DeuteroCanonical" books not included in the Protestant and Jewish canons. The year's newest Bible was the New International Version (Zondervan; $5.95), which made its bow with the New Testament. Translated by a team of conservative Protestant scholars, the NIV is briskly modern and presented in a remarkably handsome, readable format.

In still another approach to the Bible, Robert L. Short offered A Time to Be Born-A Time to Die (Harper & Row; $5.95), a photographic interpretation of the melancholy book of Ecclesiastes. Short argues that Ecclesiastes is the most moving messianic prophecy of the Old Testament because its bleak vision of life cries out for a Christ.

Jesus himself did not fare so well as the Good Book. The most overpraised of the continuing parade of bizarre interpretations was The Secret Gospel (Harper & Row; $5.95) by Biblical Scholar Morton Smith. The Jesus of The Secret Gospel, injudiciously extrapolated from Smith's serious and important studies in Gnostic manuscripts, is a mysterious magician whose disciples are initiated in strange nocturnal rites. Smith's cheek seems modest, however, compared to the sheer gall of Australian Donovan Joyce, creator of a preposterous pseudo-study called The Jesus Scroll (Dial Press; $5.95). In Donovan's account Jesus does not expire on the cross but marries Mary Magdalene and dies at 80, "the last Hasmonean king of Israel," defended by loyal Zealots at Masada.

Among the year's best books were Frederick Buechner's Wishful Thinking (Harper & Row; $4.95), a collection of trenchant theological observations by a thoughtful novelist (TIME, April 2); and Thomas Merton's Asian Journal (New Directions; $12.50), the kaleidoscopic diary of the Trappist author's final, fatal journey to the East (TIME, Aug. 6).

Some other notables:

THE ROHAN MASTER text by Millard Meiss and Marcel Thomas. 247 pages. Braziller. $40. To a secular eye, The Rohan Master might seem simply a brilliant art book, seventh in the stunning series of illuminated-manuscript facsimiles produced by George Braziller. Like its predecessors, this book of hours by an anonymous 15th century French master is a magnificent work of art. The books of hours, though, were created as prayer books. Along with the Diirer-like quality of the Rohan master's faces and his rich and courtly golds, reds and blues, there is a spiritual content that after five centuries is not antique.

WHATEVER BECAME OF SIN? by

Karl Menninger. 242 pages. Hawthorn. $7.95. The dean of American psychiatrists, who admits that he once hailed the disappearance of sin, here launches a remarkable campaign to bring back the concept. Evil surrounds us, Menninger argues, but "when no one is responsible, no one is guilty, no moral questions are asked ... we sink to despairing helplessness." America's moral slide cannot be reversed, he says, unless we accept personal responsibility for evil acts-and repent.

SECOND COLLECTION by Joel Wells.

111 pages. Thomas More. $8.95. As editor of the puckish Catholic bimonthly The Critic, Joel Wells turns out some of its best humor, the cream of it here collected. It might help to be Roman Catholic to appreciate some of the satire, but such selections as "I Am a Married Catholic, I Want to Be a Priest" or "N*rm*n **l*r Covers the Creation" are themes familiar enough to divert almost anyone. A gem: "Six Versions of a Prayer You've Heard Somewhere"-the Lord's Prayer-including the Malcolm Boyd-styled "Hey, Dad!" and the traditionalists' "Right Reverend God."

THE MACCABEES by Moshe Pearlman. 272 pages. Macmillan. $12.95. Israeli Author Pearlman draws both from the Apocrypha (Maccabees land II) and secular history for his workmanlike, heavily illustrated history of Judah the Maccabee and his Jewish warrior family. In the 2nd century B.C. the despotic Seleucid overlords of Palestine persecuted Jews and profaned the Temple until the Maccabees rose up and overthrew them. After the Temple's recapture, says the Talmud, the sanctuary's sacred flame was relighted with a day's worth of oil that miraculously lasted for eight days-the first Hanukkah.

C.S. LEWIS: IMAGES OF HIS WORLD by Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby. 192 pages. Eerdmans. $12.95. This graceful marriage of words and photographs is a Pilgrim's Progress of the young atheist poet who became one of the 20th century's most imaginative theologians. Happily, many of the captions are evocative selections from Lewis' unpublished diaries and letters.

LIVINGSTONE by Tim Jeal. 427 pages. Putnam. $10. A thorough, controversial biography of the man who bootstrapped himself out of Glasgow slums to become the 19th century's most celebrated missionary. Tough and curmudgeonly, Livingstone made only one convert in Africa (a chief named Se-chele). But he was a prime mover in destroying the Arabs' African slave trade, and his remarkable explorations opened the continent to the mixed blessings of Christianity and colonialism.

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