A helpful, informative explanation of the common ground between Judaism and Christianity.
An engaging reference explores the link between Judaism and the early Christian church.
Plant geneticist Beebe viewed faith as a crutch for those too weak to face the realities of life, until he rediscovered God through Bahá'í, a faith encompassing numerous religions. Finding his distaste for Christianity to be adverse to the Bahá'í belief that God works through all faiths, the author reexamined the Bible and the life of Jesus. After learning more about Christianity's Jewish roots, he finally came to terms with Jesus by placing Him within a historical context. This book, aimed at Christians eager to learn more about the roots of their faith, focuses on Jewish culture before and during Jesus' time. Unlike other Christian books exploring these traditions, Between the Menorah and the Cross does not cast Judaism unfavorably but instead attempts to create an accurate and unbiased depiction of Jesus by peering through a Jewish lens. For the most part, the book places a positive spin on the historical evolution of Christianity, regarding the transition from polytheism to monotheism, the new emphasis placed on ethics and the recent emphasis on individual spirituality as all parts of God's unique plan. Interspersed with short dramatizations of traditional stories from the Bible, the book explores topics such as the history of the Christian scriptures, the initial Jewish-Christian church that existed before Christianity further branched out, the emphasis placed on life after death and on the immortal soul, and the view of Jesus as an apocalyptical prophet instead of a transcendent son of God. The narrative tone is occasionally too conversational–even apologetic–which can be distracting from the provoking information contained within. Still, Beebe successfully supplies readers with a unique blend of historical information on Judaism and the early Christian church, placing familiar Christian stories such as the Good Samaritan within an insightful Jewish context.
A helpful, informative explanation of the common ground between Judaism and Christianity.Pub Date: May 27, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4257-8939-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A brutally esoteric philosophical peregrination concerning the prospects for civil society in post-Marxist Eastern and Central Europe. Gellner (Social Anthropology/Cambridge; Director of the Centre for the Study of Nationalism/Central European Univ., Prague) notes that a call to civil society has become a rallying cry for many nations formerly behind the Iron Curtain. But he is concerned that discussion about the nature of civil society has fallen out of vogue in Western philosophy. He defines civil society as ``a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual.'' Gellner refines this definition by discussing several of civil society's ``rivals,'' most notably, the Marxist state and Islam. He views the failure of the Marxist state primarily as the failure of the first large-scale secular religion, and he develops the notion that the sacralization of the everyday world, particularly the world of work, was an unsustainable venture. As the routinization of daily life began to take hold of Soviet consciousness, retreat into the sacred was made impossible since the sacred had been ideologically inverted into the mundane. This presupposes a sort of Durkheimian functionality with regard to the purpose of ritual and transcendental experience. Gellner's analysis of Islam is no less abstract and seems to capture even less of the spirit and diversity of the religion. In his discussion of the preconditions for civil society, Gellner becomes mired in historical asides that have little to do with current sociopolitical reality and that probably never had much to do with the reality of any period—comparing, for instance, the ideas of Machiavelli and de Tocqueville regarding the relative geographic distribution of social atomization. Whatever insights Gellner may have into specific historical circumstances are obscured by sociological jargon and abstraction.
Pub Date: Dec. 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-7139-9114-3
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
A unique though complicated investigation of Buddhism and feminism. Klein (Religious Studies/Rice Univ.) wants to initiate a conversation between Buddhism and Western feminism in order to tackle questions of selfhood. To do this, she juxtaposes what she sees as the feminist dichotomy between essentialism (self as intrinsic and universal womanhood) and postmodernism (all aspects of self are constructed) against the Buddhist dichotomy between the discovery of enlightenment (enlightenment is intrinsic) and developmental enlightenment (enlightenment can be acquired). According to Klein, Western feminism's emphasis on individualism results in the bifurcation of mind and body, obscuring the potentially fruitful balance between them. One method for maneuvering between connection and separateness is the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, ``the ability to sustain a calm, intense, and steady focus.'' Possible nonlinguistic states, silence, and compassion, she says, also have the potential to bridge the different levels of knowledge and to aid in the resolution of mind and body. The Great Bliss Queen, a well-known mythological female figure in some Buddhist traditions, emerges as important to Klein- -largely because there are so few female role models in Buddhism. But the Bliss Queen doesn't have easy answers to the questions Klein proposes. Repeatedly claiming that the conversation between Buddhism and feminism has the potential to offer insights to both, Klein uses technical language about Buddhist practices that obscures some of the more important discoveries. What does emerge is the falsehood of contemporary Western society's belief that an individual can be completely autonomous, with a self independent of community, a possibility that Buddhism finds absurd. In other words, it is possible to share an essential nature that is partially constructed by time and place. What promises to be a powerful analysis appears more and more to reflect Klein's own struggles to reconcile Buddhism and feminism, not accessible to most readers because of its technicality.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-8070-7306-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
