Cameron Leigh

This review was written for LibraryThing Member Giveaway

According to the website for The lordlings of worship and their catastrophic mindrides, this is a novel but it is such a small portion of this 584 page book. The premise is that Pastor Brix Brighton uncovers a plot to control the world so he enlists his son, grandson and others of like mind including Alan Taveler, for help. The key to all of this lies in the Bible and the Jewish people. This is the first of a planned 3 volume trilogy and it really just sets the stage with nothing much happening. The website states that Alan has the power to “disturb the past” but I did not find this anywhere in the text.

The majority of the text includes explanations of the Hebrew Bible and its secret creation code, the alphabet (including the coding of the vowels and consonants, and comparisons of early and late Hebrew along with Greek and English alphabets), a discussion of the deaf and their signed alphabet, and Bible stories and legends. The author does not distinguish between fact and fiction in any of these long sections of discourse but he does provide an extensive bibliography of scholarly sources, mostly in proper bibliographic citation. He does forget to include place of publication at times and sometimes drops the publisher and date in some of the books and articles. He also cites web sources. The only questionable source is Wikipedia which he cites as a whole without individual articles so there is no way of knowing what information was used. It would have been best left out since it is not a scholarly source.

The first question that came to mind when I realized that this was sections of discourse on a number of fascinating non-fiction subjects was: Who is Cameron Leigh and why did he write the book? I could not answer the first question but I can guess that he is an academic and possibly writing under a pseudonym. The chapters of non-fiction were at times repetitive, indicating that they might have been written as separate articles and strung together.

For whom did Cameron write the book? The clue to me is that he avoids using term God for the deity but instead using the term LORD (and it is always capped but not as the RSV does in the early parts of the Old Testament as LORD with the "ord" being cap lower case). This is distinctly a Christian fundamentalist way of referring to God. But he also tells the creation story and uses LORD even in the first chapter of Genesis when the P or priestly source uses God. The J or Yahwist source consistently is translated as LORD in the Bible. He also writes as if this is one story with the creation happening in seven “days” and then the LORD noticing that he needed an agriculturist and, since he had only created man as hunter, he created Adam and then Eve. This is even more curious when he states that the seven days were not literal days but the dating from Adam is accurate. So this section could not possibly be a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Or is it?

His many discussions on the alphabet with the constant repetition hinges on who developed it. The Greeks theorized that it was the Phoenicians but Cameron insists that it was an invention of the early Hebrews in order to write their Bible and pass on the secrets not meant for the rest of the world. I have been unable to verify that the Septuagint translation was done under duress by Jewish rabbis so I will accept that this is probably fiction. Since the author uses no footnotes, it is impossible at times to tell whether a section is totally fiction, partially so, or totally true without being familiar with the subject.

To me, the most fascinating sections dealt with using hand signals with the alphabet. Being the child of deaf parents and grandchild of deaf maternal grandparents, I had to learn how to spell as a small child. My parents refused to let me sign to them but occasionally they could not understand me by reading my lips and I needed to spell what I was saying. Cameron’s system of “signing” was so much more intuitive and would have been so much easier for me and my brother to learn.

So I am back to my original questions. The story is such a small section of the book that I was not terribly impressed with it. By far the best and most interesting sections for me were the non-fiction discourses but they could be tightened without loss of content. There are two more planned volumes and they need to have more action if they are classed as fiction or footnotes and proper citations if this is to be a non-fiction work. I would prefer the latter.… (altro)