Religious cultures of the world

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F.E. Peters

Publisher's description: The world's three great monotheistic religions have spent most of their historical careers in conflict or competition with each other. And yet in fact they sprung from the same spiritual roots and have been nurtured in the same historical soil. This book--an extraordinarily comprehensive and approachable comparative introduction to these religions--seeks not so much to demonstrate the truth of this thesis as to illustrate it. Frank Peters, one of the world's foremost experts on the monotheistic faiths, takes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and after briefly tracing the roots of each, places them side by side to show both their similarities and their differences. Volume I, The Peoples of God, tells the story of the foundation and formation of the three monotheistic communities, of their visible, historical presence. Volume II, The Words and Will of God, is devoted to their inner life, the spirit that animates and regulates them. Peters takes us to where these religions live: their scriptures, laws, institutions, and intentions how each seeks to worship God and achieve salvation and how they deal with their own (orthodox and heterodox) and with others (the goyim, the pagans, the infidels). Throughout, he measures--but never judges--one religion against the other. The prose is supple, the method rigorous. This is a remarkably cohesive, informative, and accessible narrative reflecting a lifetime of study by a single recognized authority in all three fields. The Monotheists is a magisterial comparison, for students and general readers as well as scholars, of the parties to one of the most troubling issues of today--the fierce, sometimes productive and often destructive, competition among the world's monotheists, the siblings called Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

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Shubha Pathak

Figuring Religions offers new ways of comparing prominent features of the world's religions. Comparison has been at the heart of religious studies as a modern academic discipline, but comparison can be problematic. Scholars of religion have been faulted for ignoring or reinterpreting differences to create a universal paradigm. In reaction, many of today's scholars have placed chief emphasis on the differences between traditions. Seeking to reinvigorate comparison and avoid its excesses, contributors to this volume use theories of metaphor and metonymy from the fields of philosophy, linguistics, and anthropology to look at religious ideas, images, and activities. Traditions considered include Hinduism, ancient Greek religions, Judaism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. By applying trope theories, contributors reveal elements of these religions in and across their coltural contexts. -- Book Jacket.

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Jitendra Nath Mohanty

"In this book, Professor Mohanty develops a new interpretation of the nature of Indian philosophical thinking. Using the original Sanskrit sources, he examines the concepts of consciousness and subjectivity, and the theories of meaning and truth, and explicates the concept of theoretical rationality which underlies the Indian philosophies. The author brings to bear insights from modern Western analytical and phenomenological philosophies, not with a view to instituting direct comparisons, but in order to interpret Indian thinking. In doing so, he highlights some of its very distinctive features."--BOOK JACKET.

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Joseph Ratzinger

"Cardinal Ratzinger seeks to deepen our understanding of the Bible's most fundamental principle. The covenant defines religion for Christians and Jews. We cannot discern God's design or his will if we do not meditate upon his covenant."--BOOK JACKET.