In BMCR …

Benjamin Garstad reviews Roger S. Bagnall’s Early Christian Books in Egypt.

Scott Carson reviews Luigi Gioia’s The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate.

Gerard O’Daly reviews Philip Rousseau and Jutta Raithel’s A Companion to Late Antiquity.

OK, so that’s overstating it. But I’m very much impressed by my wife’s recent purchase, Recipes For Life, A Catholic Family Cookbook. Who knew that the abstemious ascetics of the ancient Church could inspire such culinary delights? The book marks the feast of the Great Cappadocian, for example, with “St. Basil’s Vegetable Cheese Squares.” The recipe is preceded by a portrait of the saint and a short bio, questions for consideration in prayer, and then it’s followed by an excerpt from Basil’s Morals.

And it gets even better. At the beginning of the book is a list of “Trusted Authors,” and Yours Truly is second. Of course, it’s an alphabetical list. So I’d even beat Basil, if he were contemporary.

I’ve got to talk my daughter — the house baker — into making “Perpetua and Felicity’s Berry Puff.” Or should I start with “St. Jerome’s Lion Claws”?

I know my baker will like the book, because it’s also stocked with Bil Keane cartoons, and she’s a fan.

Amazing.

The publisher’s selling it as a fundraiser. Here’s a summary from the website:

† Over 300 tried and true recipes

† 80 saint biographies with motivational tips to help you imitate the saint coupled with a recipe to have during your once a week “Saint’s Night”

† “Family Circus” Dividers

† Eucharistic quotes sprinkled throughout

† Suggestions on how to become a saint, getting connected to the Catholic world, prayers, conversion table for metric measurements  and much more

A great fund raiser for those wanting to spread the Gospel through holy men and women AND make money for their organization.

There is no work on your part.  No collecting recipes, taking pictures, making deadlines…no hassles! Just order these cookbooks and sell them.

Order as little as 50 at wholesale prices.

Katie is not Just Another Catholic Mom — though that’s the name she blogs by. She’s a very astute reader  and reviewer of my books. She’s posted a review of The Fathers of the Church (Expanded Edition), and here’s a little excerpt:

Thorough enough that it’s used by clergy and seminarians, the books is also easy to read and accessible to lay Catholics, which was just what I was looking for. I’ve always been interested in learning more about the early Church, but have found other books to be entirely too academic and boring for me to get through. Aquilina’s book, in contrast, I actually thought was fun to read … This expanded version also includes a short chapter on “Mothers of the Church” that was fascinating.

I haven’t read these books or heard the audio tapes they were based on, but I’ll bet they’re fascinating. Cistercian Publications has brought out multiple volumes of edited transcriptions of Thomas Merton’s conferences for Trappist novices. Several volumes deal exclusively or mostly with the Church Fathers: Cassian and the Fathers, An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: (from the Apostolic Fathers to the Council of Trent), Pre-Benedictine Monasticism, and The Rule of Saint Benedict. Merton could be maddening and often controversial. He certainly sinned grievously against his vows. But he was brilliant and gifted with remarkable insight. I hope to peruse these conferences some day. The original audio sources are for sale here.

BMCR reviews the third edition of Michael W. Holmes’ The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, a handsome, durable, beautifully bound book that is never far from my reach.

This third edition of The Apostolic Fathers, edited and translated by Michael W. Holmes, traces its origins back to the bilingual edition of J. B. Lightfoot collected, edited, and published posthumously by J. R. Harmer in 1891. Holmes revised the Greek texts and English translations of this nineteenth-century work in 1992 and published an updated edition in 1999. The new edition under review here, however, has shed almost all vestiges of Lightfoot-Harmer and stands on its own as an independent critical edition of the Greek texts and English translations of the Apostolic Fathers.

The volume contains introductions to and editions and translations of the following works: First Clement, Second Clement, the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle to Diognetus, the Fragment of Quadratus, and Fragments of Papias.

The reviewer helpfully treats each ancient author individually. Read on.

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.