by Bonnie Ring ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2015
An important contribution to the scholarly literature on Jesus, both feminist and otherwise.
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A debut book offers a reconsideration of the role of women in Jesus’ life and ministry.
One could argue that Jesus’ interactions with women recorded throughout the Gospels are either unduly neglected or misinterpreted through a historically hypermasculine worldview. Ring, a psychotherapist and Episcopal priest, challenges this diminishment of women in the Bible by reassessing some of the stories involving Jesus’ various encounters with them. In doing so, the author not only raises important questions about the women within the Bible and Christianity at large, but also furnishes a new appraisal of Jesus’ overall message. For example, Ring analyzes several biblical stories in which Mary of Nazareth figures prominently and compares the very different treatment she is given in the Synoptic Gospels versus the Gospel of John. What emerges is a much more assertive Mary, not only valued for her passivity and obedience, but also for her courage and participation in Jesus’ religious development. The author even more forcefully rehabilitates the reputation of Mary Magdalene, providing what amounts to a direct repudiation of the conventionally accepted view: “Despite the many voluptuous portrayals of Mary Magdalene you have seen, there is not a shred of evidence to support the claim that she was a prostitute. In fact, she was a significant companion of Jesus who shared in his ministry and stood by him until the very end.” In some instances, the power of Ring’s interpretation is not so much in its rejection of tradition but in a new and clarifying contextualization. For example, while discussing Jesus’ healing of a woman hemorrhaging badly, Ring explains the stigma attached to her condition; in Jewish culture at the time, she would have been considered unclean. Ultimately, the deepest value of Ring’s thoughtful effort is that it amplifies one of Jesus’ principal teachings—the radical equality of all human beings—by demonstrating the equality of all of Jesus’ followers, regardless of gender. The author’s research is meticulous and luminously presented, and her message is profoundly Christian and modern.
An important contribution to the scholarly literature on Jesus, both feminist and otherwise.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-3225-7
Page Count: 262
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Bonnie Ring
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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