The New Jerusalem: A Millennium Poetic/Prophetic Travel Diario 1959-1962 - Softcover

Eisenman, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556436378 ISBN 13: 9781556436376

Publisher: North Atlantic Books, 2007

Synopsis

This poetic diary documents Robert Eisenman’s life-changing backpacking journey through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the early 1960s. Eisenman’s search for meaning took him to San Francisco and its Beat culture, to Paris, to Lebanon, Israel, and far beyond. The author's keen eye catches it all: pre-hippie hotels, midnight encounters with beautiful women, “India’s ceaseless fever,” the lure of distant cities and landscapes. Alternately hopeful and critical, these poems vividly etch the pleasures and perils of a bygone era and their profound effect on one young poet.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Eisenman is the author of several books on the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Christian history. He is currently Professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at California State University, Long Beach, and is a Visiting Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford, England. He was a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and a U.S. Endowment for the Humanities Fellow-in-Residence at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, where the Dead Sea Scrolls first came in. He was the leader of the 1987-1992 worldwide campaign to break the academic monopoly over the Dead Sea Scrolls, freeing them for research by all interested persons, regardless of affiliation or credentials.

In his twenties, Eisenman was one of the earliest young American “spiritual tourists” and overland backpackers to India. He lived in the Beat Hotel, Paris (1959-1960), while William Burroughs was in residence there; and traveled through Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India while writing the poems of The New Jerusalem in his notebook.

Review:

Praise for James the Brother of Jesus

“Encyclopaedic ... Fascinating ...”
—Karen Armstrong writing in The Times of London

“A tremendous work ... This book will live and live and live!”
—The Jerusalem Post

“Less a book than an irresistible force. Once opened ... [it] bulldozes your prejudices, flattens your objections, elbows aside your counter-arguments, convinces you.”
—Toronto Globe & Mail

“I permanently admire this superb book.”
—Harold Bloom, author of Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine

About this edition

• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1556436378
• ISBN 13: 9781556436376
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512