Word: podro
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Congratulations to TIME [July 26] from Joshua Podro and myself on a splendidly clean scythe sweep or hatchet job [on The Nazarene Gospel Restored]. Your reviewer has kept well within the statutory limits of fair comment . . . But, on the theory that TIME brings all things, we miss your timely congratulations on our tactical successes. Amateur Scholar Joshua Podro has somehow contrived to satisfy real Jewish scholars of the highest professional standing that he has an enviably deep knowledge of the purely Aramaic setting of the Gospel story. Nor has "Crank" Robert Graves yet been caught out in any historical blunder...
...your review of The Nazarene Gospel Restored by Robert Graves and Joshua Podro: it is the clear duty of both branches of Christianity, Protestant and Catholic . . . to severely rebuke both authors and publisher of this sacrilegious work...
...Reassurance. "This book is published," write the authors, ". . . to reassure the lay public that the original Gospel stood foursquare . . ." But the layman who reads on soon finds that the "original Gospel" according to Graves and Podro is a far cry from the canonical books of the New Testament. The canonical books, "judged by Greek literary standards" say Graves & Podro ". . . are poor; by historical standards, unreliable; and their doctrine is confused and contradictory. The late-Victorian atheist (was it Bradlaugh?) may be excused for remarking that they read as though 'concocted by illiterate, half-starved visionaries in some dark corner...
...foursquare Gospel discovered by Graves & Podro purports to be the Word as it was before the Gentiles began to monkey with it. Jesus, in the Graves-Podro work, was "a man of unusual learning, wit and piety," a member of a small apocalyptic sect. He was adopted by Mary Magdalene, crowned King of the Jews by John the Baptist at a ceremony that included a ritual mockery and beating. This, according to the authors, is where the mocking and scourging by the soldiers of Pilate really belongs. The Graves-Podro Jesus decided to bring on the Kingdom by his death...
Paul is the villain of the Gospel-according-to-Graves-&-Podro. A "Greek-speaking adventurer" disguised as a Pharisee, and certainly no Jew, he began his subversion of the Nazarene Church after he had been converted on the road to Damascus-not by a vision but by Jesus' actual appearance, which literally scared the daylights...