The First Americans; In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery
by J.M. Adovasio and Jake Page
Modern Library, 2003.
Paperback. 330 pages.

This book is about the quest to find pre-Clovis (c. 13,000 years and older) inhabitants of the Americas. Professor Adovasio has an ax to grind in this book. He was the archaeologist in charge of one of the best-documented paleo-Indian sites in North America, the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Geological stratigraphy, as well as radio-carbon dating set the baskets and other objects uncovered at the site at well before the arrival of the first “official” inhabitants of America–the Clovis people–known for the distinctive fluting of their dart and spear points. This set Adovasio on a collision course with the powers that be in the tight-knit world of Amerindian archaeology, and the battles for acceptance–which are still apparently in progress–were and are acerbic and scarifying. This aspect of the book I found the least to my taste. Fortunately the authors wait until the last quarter of the book to bring these ego-clashes to the fore. The rest of the book sets forth a fascinating picture of the history of discoveries relating to the earliest inhabitants of the New World, as well as a reconstruction of what that world was like when mega-fauna, like the nightmarish Short-Faced Bear (Arctodus simus), preyed freely on homo sapiens. One point that surprised me was that everyday temperatures could be positively spring-like, even in the shadow of slow-moving glaciers, and that the Ice Ages created new ecological systems that forced both animals and plants to evolve new adaptions to their environment in relatively short periods of time. But for the personal attacks at the end, not matter how deserved, this is an excellent and entertaining read. Recommended.

How wonderful to learn something absolutely new! Just recently I discovered the poet barnabe Googe for myself in Paul Keegan’s The Penguin Book of English Verse. Googe (1540–1594) lived right on the cusp between archaic and modern English, and many of his poems are refreshingly “plain,” with a rather metaphyscal feeling:

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The oftener seen, the more I lust,
The more I lust, the more I smart,
The more I smart, the more I trust,
The more I trust, the heavier heart;
The heavy heart breeds mine unrest,
Thy absence, therefore, like I best.

The rarer seen, the less in mind,
The less in mind, the lesser pain,
The lesser pain, less grief I find,
The lesser grief, the greater gain,
The greater gain, the merrier I,
Therefore I wish thy sight to fly.

The further off, the more I joy,
The more I joy, the happier life,
The happier life, less hurts annoy,
The lesser hurts, pleasure most rife:
Such pleasures rife shall I obtain
When distance doth depart us twain.

Commynge Home-warde out of Spayne

O ragyng Seas,
and myghty Neptunes rayne,
In monstrous Hylles,
that throwest thy selfe so hye,
That wyth thy fludes,
doest beate the shores of Spayne:
And breake the Clyves,
that dare thy force envie.
Cease now thy rage,
and laye thyne Ire asyde,
And thou that hast,
the governaunce of all,
O myghty God,
grant Wether Wynd and Tyde,
Tyll on my Coun-
treye Coast, our Anker fall.

I particularly like the hyphenation between the penultimate and final lines.

The Gospel of Judas
Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer and Gregor Wurst
National Geographic, 2006. Hardback. $14.30.

The Lost Gospel; The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot.
Herbert Krosney
National Geographic, 2006. Hardback. $17.00.

When I learned about the discovery, conservation, translation, and finally–publication of the Gospel of Judas, my heart throbbed and I tossed and turned as I did when I was a young man in love for the first time. I have to admit being a secret fan of Judas Iscariot (literally, the man from the Judean village of Kariot, once located near the modern city of Arad). I’ve always believed that he got a bad rap, especially as Christ himself seemed to be in on the act in the Gospel of John, when he says to Judas, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” (13:24-27)

However, as I finally discovered that my beloved was human and not the embodiment of the Universal Feminine as I had once believed, so too, when I feverishly began to read the Gospel of Judas itself, I found an interesting, but not spectacular, retelling of the relationship between Christ and Judas, and “secrets” that are merely part and parcel of Sethian Gnosticism. This does not at all take away from the importance of the book,–truly it is an important find with some wonderful moments in the translation–but it is not the earth-shaking document we were led to expect (and as the Nag Hammadi version of the Book of Thomas certainly is) and I must say that the folks at National Geographic would have done better by muting some of the hype.

In the book of Judas, Christ is a kind of superman descended from the far-distant aeon–or sphere–of Barbelo. His disciples really don’t understand the true nature of Christ, but Judas, who has a bit of that far-distant world of perfection in his soul as well, seems to intuit what Christ really is. Christ laughs at him and at the other disciples, who appear to be intent on worshipping the bloody-browed Yaldaboath, who with Saklas (the fool) and assorted demons, created the foul world called the earth. (William Blake would have done great illustrations of these characters, I’m sure.) Those of the generation of Seth (as Judas apparently is), can manage to survive after death and return to the great uncreating, uncreated source of all that is–i.e. Barbelo. Those who are of lesser lineage return to the nothing from which they summoned by the bear-like Yaldaboath. These are the worshippers of the God of this world, usually thought of as the Old Testament Yahweh. This knowledge is the source of Christ’s mirth. His other disciples grow angry at his laughter.

Christ calls Judas aside and explains everything to him. When Judas tells Christ his dream in which the other disciples despise him and stone him, Christ assures Judas that he will eventually be greater than all the others. Then a cloud appears–ufo-like–and Judas enters the cloud. The cloud apparently has a loud-speaker system, because “a voice” announces something about Judas that was, unfortunately, lost in the original.

After the transfiguration of Judas, Jesus is handed over to the authorities.

The Gospel of Judas stops there. There is no mention of the crucifixion.

I truly wish someone would illustrate the Book of Judas as well as the books of the Nag Hammadi library–some Blake-like genius worthy of these hallucinated texts.

Interesting on a far different level is Krosney’s The Lost Gospel. This books tells the twists and turns of the story of how the Gospel of Judas was found, almost destroyed, and finally conserved, translated, and published. We’re treated to fascinating descriptions of how the antiquities business is carried on in the international market, and how a badly-damaged, barely readable text can be painstakingly rebuilt, shred by shred by gifted hands and gifted minds. The only fault that I could find with Krosney’s book is its repetitiveness. It appears to have been written with serial publication in mind, and there is a breath-taking amount of bringing the reader up to speed at the beginning of each chapter, which is not necessary in a book with an index. Some of the color illustrations, too, seem out of place in the book. These are minor quibbles, however. This book is neither too technical, nor too simple-minded concerning its subject, and as I said, is a fun read for the rainy season.

Quaoar
by Ralph Hawkins, Alan Halsey, and Kelvin Corcoran
West House Books, 2006.
Spiral Bound, unpaginated. No price listed. Available from SPD Books.

A lively romp with near-Joycean twists, surrealistically illustrated by–If I’m not mistaken–my first-cousin, Alan Halsey.

Here’s an example of the energetic style and the capacious allusive range:

“At least we know what an unhatched
massospondylus dreamt of
but Bornogo? Alas. Tell Socrates
all that was inscribed on this particular tabula rasa
was the phrase ‘now swells with its ripening plot’
such venom de plume
regressive as the lyrics in a sci-fi western
in which nobody had noticed the Venusian landing in 1950
sort of Rip Van Winkle crossed with Gertruce Stein
very mine and in a dreamy way more Bee Time Vine
than vitamin D or Evita
‘iffy and effete’ Miss Smith burbled…”

Incredibly cultured, learned, and fun! Wish I had been there! Read this tome and you’ll wish you had been there, too.