Biblical Cranks: A Review

Before I describe my own vital contribution to the achievement, simple modesty requires me to point out that Loren Rosson's Biblical Cranks, for all its flaws, merits more attention than would normally be granted to a scholar-wannabe's attempt to prove himself in the middle of a mid-life crisis. My own role in the book's creation simply owed to being in the right place at the right time.

In the summer of 2008 I arrived unannounced at Loren's apartment, passing through New Hampshire and wanting to catch up on arthouse flicks, not having seen my friend in months. Three full minutes after ringing the bell I looked in on a stranger: a bleary-eyed, emaciated skeleton out of Edgar Allen's Poetry. More stunning was the phantom's speech, incorporating obscenities every other phrase, as in, "Fuck, Leonard, like where the fuck you been, man, shit, man, thought you'd blown me off for good." I squinted; yes, this was Loren -- hideously distorted under bloodshot eyes, puffed cheeks, four-day stubble, and unkept hair that bore a passing resemblance to the mophead used on my kitchen floor.

Scarcely able to contain my shock, I allowed myself to be pulled through the doorway and pounded jovially on the back, when came the overpowering reek from his breath, the odor of which I judged to be gasohol. "Sit the fuck down, man, I'll get you some." I fell into a sofa stained by pizza sauce and various bodily fluids, and as Loren proceeded to mix a ghastly concoction of liquors (the "gasohol"), I wondered how in the nine hells he'd reached this state of affairs.

Serving me the gasohol in a filthy glass -- and knocking back what must have been his own eighth or ninth shot of the poison -- Loren confided that his latest project was a treatise on scholarly cranks of the bible. The unfamiliar names of Yuri Kuchinsky, Andrew Tempelman, Geoff Hudson, Eric Zuesse, Leon Zitzer, Robert Conner, James Tabor, and Ben Witherington III floated from his slurred speech, barely comprehensible around his bitter grievances against a world that failed to appreciate his talents. At the time I had only a vague notion of the scholarly crimes which could be laid at the feet of these people, not only because I don't read much in the field, but because Loren wasn't putting two sentences together around his self-pity: "Lenny, man, I can hardly blow my horn anymore, ya know, like shit man, just wanna get something done, man, but like, can't find my fuckin' voice, ya know..." He wasn't working on this book, just dreaming about it while his liver put in the overtime.

After tolerating forty-five minutes of this "speech", I gave it to him both barrels. What I said to Loren must remain forever confidential, but suffice to say that from that day to this he has managed to conduct himself like a responsible citizen and not a denizen of seedy brothels. Nor does he drench his conversation with vulgarity. He respects his liver. I only wish I had succeeded in deterring him from writing a tediously cheap diatribe against "scholars" who merit little if any attention. The world would be better served by Loren's ideas on the New Perspective instead of knocking down straw men. But at least he applied himself in front of the keyboard, and this book is the end result.

And despite its haughty tone and frequent lapses into ad hominems, ad hoc arguments, and ad nauseum exaltations of the Context Group, Biblical Cranks manages to keep its head above water at least some of the time. The sour vindictive chapter about Leon Zitzer should have been edited out of the book completely. No one has the right to treat another human being that way in print. That accepted, Loren's effort to show the dangers of a little knowledge is sobering: with "scholars" such as these, the world is in no short supply of conspiracy theories and apologetics -- and comic relief.