Reviews for Introduction to Sports Law and Business

The average rating for Introduction to Sports Law and Business based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-12-09 00:00:00 William Byrd This is the most interesting book I've read all year. It's an attempt to tell the story of the Jews from the earliest times to the Maccabean revolt using the Bible, archaeology and the general history of the area. In the absence of other evidence – or common sense – Bright defaults to the Bible (using a critical approach). The danger with this, of course, is that new facts emerge from the ground all the time. Even I, with my very sketchy knowledge of the period noticed a few points where more recent interpretations differ. I am given to understand that he published three revised editions. But that's not to say that the first edition isn't worth reading, if that is what you have available. I read it because I've been thinking of leafing through the Bible and a wanted a narrative history so I wouldn't be all at sea. I got so much more than that. The book has true literary qualities that I just wasn't expecting to find. There's a wonderful tension in the stories. Take Abraham. Now obviously there's no archaeological evidence for Abraham or for anything up to the Exodus. What Bright does is paint a picture of the times when Abraham might reasonably have lived, if he did. What emerges from the stories told about Abraham – his cultural practices and the journey he made – is that he is being presented as Mr Norman Normal. Yet on the other hand here is a man in direct communication with God. There's that tension between daily life on the one hand and the divine on the other. Later you have a people with the most grandiose conception of God and of their place in the world on the one hand. On the other the mundane truth – that they are an obscure hill-people who cannot hold their kingdom together and are apparently incapable of winning a major battle. That tension also characterises Bright's approach. His use of faith and reason to tell the story, each straining in the opposite direction and yearning for freedom. I sensed that same tension in Bright himself. He's obviously come to his subject because of it's importance to his own faith (he was Presbyterian) but he has to understand and has to know.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-01-04 00:00:00 Scott Bohe This is quite old and I read the 1972 second edition - I expected more. There is at least a certain value in this work, but the issues are many. Really Bright is an Old Testament academic, of his academic era, with overall insufficiently broad enough knowledge to properly do his topic justice. Ironically the best part of the book is the patriarchal section (from Abraham, with the direct ancestors of Israel rather than the whole Old Testament history ) where there is very little actual historical material to go on, and therefore Bright has to put everything into context based on external sources. Bright offers some quite useful broad context and interpretation, albeit that he fails to explore options and alternative explanations e.g. for the location of Mt Sinai. Overall he confirms the reasonableness of the account found in the bible. However once we reach the actual historical books, from Joshua into Kings, then really all Bright is doing, is simply recounting and interrelating material from the bible and only very occasionally digging deeper or wider - presumably where it is important to his own internal narrative e.g.there's a lot of discussion on the date of Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem because Bright considers Ezra to be critically significant. Despite repeatedly stating it isn't his place to tell broader stories of the world political situation he always does so, but of course this is important to do (why even say it?). However overall there is far too little effort to find links and cross references with extra biblical material( except perhaps the considerable effort to discuss Hezekiah's survival versus Sennacherib). Basically anyone with a passing knowledge of ancient history and a good biblical knowledge could have done this equal justice. This pattern by and large, except perhaps with the Ezra exception, continues with the exile and post exile period. Then the book finishes off at the end of the Old Testament, merely giving a preview of the Maccabean uprising. Surely Bright can't have it both ways - either he is telling the history of the Old Testament where he has to start earlier, or he has to take the history of Israel up to its end - at least Roman times or perhaps to 70AD? This is just laziness as it stands. Right across the whole history there is a failure to address any matters that speak of miracle, predictive prophecy or actual intervention from God. Of course this is not really the purpose of this book, but why ignore the book of Esther, the plagues of Egypt, Gideon etc? How can it be a history of Israel without even mentioning these? I certainly get the feeling that Bright is a 'Christian' agnostic i.e. teaches and practices at a Presbyterian seminary, but doesn't really believe himself in the truth of what he belongs to. Thus there is a suspicion that datings of various books e.g. Daniel is based post exile entirely on the assumption that it could not have prophesied the future, while simultaneously ignoring Ezekiel's mention of Daniel. Basically Bright is too bound to the agnosticism of his academic era and merely parrots the conventional wisdom of that day, without critical examination or justification. This also largely holds true, albeit with a mildly conservative stance, when it comes to interpretation of Old Testament theology. There is also a too common tendency to reach sweeping conclusions on both historical matters and theological thinking without giving any evidence or argument to support that conclusion. That is to say - he just accepts the 'party line' without giving the reader any background to how that position was derived at. I'm not saying at all, we needed a spiritual history as such with this book; in fact that would defeat its purpose, but simply Bright's prejudices prevented any thoroughgoing analysis as good history. All this being said the book would be a useful enough background for those wanting an overall background history except that it is far too wordy for such a purpose. There is far too much speculation, wild and unjustified extrapolation, repetition, verbiage and general fluff - these 465 pages could have been easily edited down a good 200+ pages without any content loss, then we might have been left a useful resource, especially considering the chronological charts and maps that are included.