The New Republic reviewed Paula Fredriksen’s Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism.

The Economist reviewed Miri Rubin’s Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary. I haven’t read this one. Her Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture was very useful to me as I was writing The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence. Her thesis, in a nutshell, was that the realist doctrine of Transubstantiation made possible many of the great things in Christendom: the hospitals, hostels, and hospices, the orders dedicated to charitable works, etc. She was great on the medieval, but she didn’t quite get the Fathers’ doctrine of the Eucharist. In fact, she acted as if eucharistic realism arose in the Middle Ages, and she showed no evidence of having read Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, or more than a bit of Chrysostom on the subject. I fear the same thing might happen in this book — but, again, I can’t say because I haven’t read it.