The Two Children: A Study of the Two Jesus Children in Literature and Art | 
 enlarge | Author: David Ovason
Publisher: Random House UK
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1289896
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 0712684921
Dewey Decimal Number: 232
EAN: 9780712684927
ASIN: 0712684921
Publication Date: November 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New - may have a small remainder mark on the edge.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Although the Gospels of Matthew and Luke support the tradition that there were two Jesus children, the idea was not adopted by the Church. Something of the idea lingered on in Christian art and symbolism, but the full tradition was preserved only in the literature of such esoteric sects as the Gnostics, who did not adopt all the official teachings of institutionalized Christianity. David Ovason explores the literature and art in which these symbols have been preserved, in particular, the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, and Greek literature discovered in the 20th century at sites near the Dead Sea and in Egypt. The texts confirm the belief in the existence of two Messiahs. Ovason explores many fascinating and “apocryphal” texts containing references to the two children, which were later expunged or glossed over by Church apologists. He speculates on the reasons why the idea of the two children should have become so popular in early 15th century Italian art and studies traces of the theme in the work of such artists as Borgognone, Ferrari, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.
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| Customer Reviews:
Read wtih Care December 7, 2002
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I took up this book glad to see that someone else had had the courage to discuss the stories of the birth of Jesus in the Bible and reach what seems to me the obvious conclusion. I was impressed by the amount of research that had gone into the work, and by the variety of sources that Ovason was able to quote and assess. In some cases I had worked with the same sources and come to the same conclusions.
What prevents me from giving the fifth star is the fact that in places the book shows signs of having been too hastily sent off to the publisher. There are numerous small errors which an alert editor should have caught: for example, he refers to a picture as having six representations of the Bull on it, and lists only five. In the accompanying illustration I find only the five that he mations. Again, he speaks of the 21 verses in Luke 2 which tell the story of the 12 year old Jesus in the Temple. The story is told in 11 verses. Or again, there is at least one wildly incorrect transliteration from the Greek. And there are the obvious typos that suggest too much reliance on a computer spell check program. All of this casts a shadow over the scholarship of what is otherwise an important effort to deal with one of the fundamental questions placed before us by the four gospels.
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