  | Book Details Title: Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean (Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East) |
Book DescriptionAbout the Author Erica Ferg is an assistant professor in the Liberal Arts department at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, where she teaches courses on Islam, Christianity, Judaism, world religions, and religious studies theories and methods. Her doctorate is in the Study of Religion, and her area of specialization is Eastern Mediterranean comparative religious history. Her research focuses on Mediterranean comparative religion, comparative linguistics, and archaeology. Prior to academia, Erica was a Persian linguist in the United States Air Force. Erica is at work on her second book, entitled Starry Nights: A Celestial History of Religion in the Mediterranean. Read more Customers Review:Short answer: 5/5 Yelp reviewSo lets get started. I had the pleasure of actually meeting and speaking with Mrs. Ferg and she is as delightful and intelligent in conversation as her book shows her to be. There is a true respect and emotion to the text and from what I have read so far, its a very different look on the correlations of religion. I’m not in school for religion, however I find psychology and religion to be very interesting. Full disclosure I don’t believe in any of the religious stuff, but its interesting to me how and why people believe in magical sky lords, so when I heard about this book I figured, why not. Doesn’t matter what sky unicorn you pray to, this book is a fair assessment of all religions and how they piece together in different ways. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, (to be fair the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar took me 3 weeks) however what I have read has made me think about different questions than I couldn’t have ever thought up on my own. “Did Jesus get sunburned?” or “Were there berries on the burning bush?” or best stated by Dana Carvey, “Does God have feet?”; all fantastic questions that you will not find in this book because this isn’t about that. What you will learn is how one character will appear through multiple religions (I keep hoping Jesus will turn up as an assassin pirate in another religion). How and why based off of the travel, location, and I’m going to assume war (I haven’t read about any war yet, but fingers crossed for a good old fashioned crusade or inquisition). Despite it being mostly an educational book, the tone taken by the author is one of general question and scientific searching, rarely found in many educational entries. It’s the reason I can read it and still enjoy it, its wordy however its written in an explanatory way, rather than a preachy / educational way.If you’re wondering should I buy the next Witcher book, or should if you should buy this, I’m gonna say you most likely want to go ahead with Witcher, I don’t think this is what you’re looking for. I keep hoping for sex and arms getting cut off, but no dice so far. However if you want to read a book that will slowly un-weave a tapestry of twining religion and show you relations and reasons for religions you probably never even thought of, than this is a great book to slowly read through and take in an amazing prospective on hundreds of years of beliefs. Now if you will excuse me, I shall go read some more while I eat my goldfish crackers and sip from my dinosaur cup. Cheers and enjoy the book. | |
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