Left Hand of God: A Biography of the Holy Spirit Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Left Hand of God: A Biography of the Holy Spirit Book

As Jack Miles is to God, Adolf Holl is to the Holy Spirit. Like Miles's God: A Biography, Holls's The Left Hand of God: A Biography of the Holy Spirit deftly weaves scholarly reflections on religion, myth, and culture into a compelling story about the life of a divinity. Holls casts his net wide, trolling history to discern the similarities and differences among Christian, Jewish, and Islamic relationships with the Spirit. He also has a keen eye for wildly unusual expressions of the Spirit, which inspire him to ask some questions you've always been curious about, and others that may seem, at first glance, almost absurd: Why does the story of Jesus' baptism render the Spirit as a dove? Has the Holy Spirit ever been a member of the Communist party? How did James Joyce and Rainer Maria Rilke receive the Spirit--or did they? This is a witty, brilliant, readable, enlivening story. Its brief chapters are easy on the attention span without being soft on the brain. Best of all, The Left Hand of God never quite makes up its mind as to whether its subject is a figment of our imagination or the Real Thing. After all, that's your job. --Michael Joseph GrossRead More

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  • Product Description

    Adolf Holl's divine biography examines the life of the Holy Spirit in the context of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Interweaving scholarship with religion, myth, and culture, Holl expertly traces the influence of the Holy Spirit on men and women from all walks of life, down the centuries. The result is quite unlike anything written before.

    The Jews recognized the Holy Spirit as the breath of God. He motivated a few Galilean fishermen to find the courage to preach a new world religion. Mohammed was inspired by him in the dictation of the Koran. Yet this same spirit has moved individuals to rebel against convention, authority, and even sanity. Through Holl's freewheeling, yet always crystal-clear discourse, readers see how the Holy Spirit informs an incredible array of beliefs (the rituals of Appalachian snake handlers) and ideas (the works of Freud and James Joyce, among many others).

    When the book was published in Germany, Der Spiegel wrote, "Holl has presented a formidable history, linking together the most distant things in a surprising way and leaving the whole as a paradox. He leaves it to the reader to judge the encounter with the Holy Spirit as a manifestation of the divine in the human being -- or as a case for the psychiatrist". Whatever the conclusion of readers may be, "The Left Hand of God" is a significant contribution to the understanding of the elusive Holy Spirit.

  • 0385492855
  • 9780385492850
  • Adolf Holl
  • 1 January 2000
  • Bantam Doubleday Dell
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 368
  • New edition
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