• November 6, 2024

Belief & Unbelief by Barbara G. Walker

Criticisms

In the inscription of the copy of her book to me, Barbara calls me “a great editor,” based on my work on her book Man Made God, which I published through Stellar House. Man Made God was a monumental work, replete with Walker’s fabulous writing, which I edited diligently, adding numerous subtitles, footnotes both with annotations and without and illustrations. Her writing in general is so good and meticulous that it required but a few tiny changes here and there. Hence, I can understand why the editor of Belief & Unbelief readily put together this tome, but there are some inconsistencies with punctuation (as on quotes) and citations, and the editing lacks the thoroughness that Barbara deserves. Ultimately, however, this diligence deficiency does not detract one whit from Walker’s wisdom.

As a related aside, Man Made God was publicized in an article on Christmas in December 2014 on CNN.com entitled “Where Christmas really came from”:

Scholars have been all over this, going back to one of the earliest Christian writers, St. Epiphanius of Salamis, who noted the similarities. (The details of this connection will be found in a recent book by Barbara G. Walker and D.M. Murdock, “Man Made God: A Collection of Essays”.)

A lengthy discussion of Epiphanius and the Egyptian practice of bringing out a babe in a manger at winter solstice can be found also in my book Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection.