Book Review: Crucible of Faith by Philip Jenkins

This is a detailed, interesting history of an overlooked period time: roughly the period between Malachi and Matthew, which I had described to me as the 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testaments. Yet it was a time of political turmoil and theological innovation as ideas were developed that led to Christianity. What's fascinating to me is how many ideas that look like abrupt innovations were more gradual changes in thought in response to external conditions. Just like human evolution, theological evolution gets more and more complicated the closer you look at it. The standout issue to me at the time is the nature of Adam and the Fall, and surprisingly, the original idea placed the Fall with the Watchers -- in Genesis 6 -- rather than with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. I think this helps, because it shows that the Fall is more than a single event and is at the very least diffused over 9 chapters rather than located in one. How does this change how we talk about it? Of course, Jenkins is a historian and this book has very little interpretation. Also, sometimes he tosses out specific historical references and proper names that get the less historically minded reader lost in the weeds. I want to know what Jenkins thinks, and he seems too careful to say, like a professor wanting his students to develop their own ideas. Another interesting side of this is how the same dualism keeps showing up, first in the Crucible years (as Jenkins calls the few centuries before Christ), then in Gnosticism, and then in the heresy fights for centuries. I want to draw a line between these movements that in my opinion draw too firm a line between matter and spirit. Why do we keep making these mistakes? Lots to think about, and I would like to know where the scholarship is that takes these ideas and thinks about it in a practical Christian context. This book is a great starting point but it leaves me with far more questions than I started with. I certainly appreciate that.