Come Sweet Death

by Bunyan Davie Napier

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B000K09FPG
• Release Date: January 1968
• Publisher: United Church Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Preaching as Storytelling-Par Excellence

Dr. Napier was my primary Old Testament professor and mentor at Yale Divinity School and "Come Sweet Death" comprised some of his imaginative chapel sermons in which he marvelously moves from the Biblical text into our cultural/social arena, applying the truths of Genesis to us. One must have some awareness of the Genesis text and scholarship of Gerhard von Rad and his American disciples, of whom Davie Napier is one; but Napier goes beyond von Rad in his interpretive skills and possesses unique insights. I use it as a resource text in my university/theological seminary courses. A must for the Biblical interpreter in a time when our sermons and commentaries are so flat and unexciting.

A complex, lyrical retelling of the Genesis stories

Knowing virtually nothing about the author, this unique book is going to be particularly hard to review. This is basically poetry of a rather abstract sort, broken up into five sections: The Garden, The Brothers, The Flood, The Tower, and The Land. The author introduces each section with a scriptural passage from Genesis, then rewrites the tale thus told in an entirely modern, disconcerting way. He apparently does have a good bit of Biblical knowledge, but he treats the material more as myth than as divine revelation. Even if the events never happened, they necessarily "are" now and forever, and Napier runs with this idea, making his lyrical re-telling a present-tense yet timeless story. His speakers refer to places and events throughout history and sometimes play off of modern phrases and references. The author describes this book as an "existentialist interpretation" of the major events of Genesis' opening chapter, but I don't think I would classify it as such. It is rather striking, however, as Adam and Cain basically claim the world as their own domain, criticize God for punishing them for things he supposedly led them into, and do all but tell God to go jump in the lake. I was expecting a poignant, somewhat inspiring retelling of the Genesis stories, but I in fact got just the opposite. Each "speaker" basically concludes his personal quintet with the plea "come sweet death," essentially refuting God entirely. The opening section is particularly disconcerting, as Adam criticizes and lambasts God from the time of his creation to the moment of his expulsion from the Garden (which came about because of "a silly tree"). All I can do is describe the unusual nature of this book; I think the interpretation of it is a purely subjective, personal one that may vary widely from one reader to the next.