Let's have a religious book thread

[struggle4progress]

I'm reading the Joel Marcus translation and commentary on the gospel of Mark: it's about 1200 pages and I'm about 1/4 through it

After an extensive intro and bibliography, Marcus produces somewhat as follows: a paragraph of Mark, several pages of discussion about translation issues and perhaps variant texts, and then several pages of commentary. It's serious scholarly work, which points out a nice cross-section of existing approaches

I picked Mark for several reasons: it is believed to be the earliest of the gospels and is not as theologically elaborated as the others; Schweitzer's historical conclusion was something like ultimately, we are find only a torn and tattered gospel of Mark; the gospel is notable for the fact that some early versions end with the discovery of the empty tomb; and decades ago, I was much influenced by Belo's Materialistic Reading -- as eclectic amateur scholarship based on secondary sources, Belo's work does not appear in Marcus' bibliography

This is a thought-provoking summary of what is known

[LAGC]

1. Currently reading: Challenging the Verdict

A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ."

(He's tearing him a new one...)

[frogmarch]

4. Sounds good. I read excerpts

here: http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CTVExcerptsIntro.htm

[struggle4progress]

9. I own, and have read, GA Wells' "Who was Jesus?" According to wikipedia, Wells' work

influenced Doherty. Wells is primarily a scholar of scholar of German literature, with an interest in debunking the Bible, and "Who was Jesus" is mostly devoted to noticing various contradictions between New Testament texts.

[frogmarch]

15. Thanks. I'd like to

read it. I'll put it on my "must read" list.

[struggle4progress]

16. I actually wasn't much impressed by it. I suppose "Jesus is a myth" is an interesting

historical thesis, but I wasn't reading the New Testament as a historical documentary before I read Wells. And I think the contradictions in the New Testament have been evident to any careful reader for nearly two millennia now, so triumphantly pointing out the contradictions there seems to me an uninformative exercise; it is also an entirely unoriginal exercise -- others have done it often in recent centuries, sometimes with much more rhetorical verve than Wells exhibits; Paine's Age of Reason, for example, at least has the virtue of some lively writing

[frogmarch]

17. Thanks again!

I found Age of Reason online. :-)

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/

[Warpy]

2. "The Book (on the taboo against knowing who you are)" by Watts and Burns

It's a fascinating read and a great way to play with your head. All his books are good ones, but that one is especially accessible to neophytes.

Oooh, Amazon has it, I'd thought it long out of print: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Taboo-Against-Knowing-Who/dp/1559270659/ref=sr_1_23?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313473835&sr=1-23

[struggle4progress]

10. I haven't read any Watts for a long time. In the early 70s, some of his shorter works

got me interested in Eastern religions. The theme "we aren't really who we think we are" has a long history: most recently, I've been intrigued by some of Thomas Merton's comments on the subject

[AlecBGreen]

3. Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist"

One of my favorite books. Good idea for a thread :hi:

Have you read anything by John Stott? A friend at church said he was the most influential author he (the friend) had ever read.

[struggle4progress]

11. Here I must confess my prejudices: religious fundamentalists all around me, when I was

growing up, really admired Billy Graham style evangelism, and I developed a distaste for it. So writers like John Stott would generally fall low on my reading list. I just really can't quite assimilate the mindset. I realize this is sometimes unfair: Jimmy Carter, for example, is a person I admire tremendously, and he is quite obviously cast from an evangelical mould

[Adsos Letter]

5. "The Idea of Natural Rights" by Brian Tierney

"Tierney's account of the ways in which the concept of natural rights--a medieval notion--made its way to the modern world..."

http://www.amazon.com/Idea-Natural-Rights-University-Religion/product-reviews/0802848540/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

also:

The Religious Left and Church-State Relations by Steven H. Shiffrin (2009) for a look at how the "religious left" (a pretty broad-brush characterization) views the subject.

[struggle4progress]

12. The Tierney book looks interesting. Here's a link to a short paper (pdf) in which

he discusses some of his views:

Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights
Volume 2 (Spring 2004)
THE IDEA OF NATURAL RIGHTS - ORIGINS AND PERSISTENCE
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v2/2/2.pdf

[Adsos Letter]

14. I will check that out, thank you. I've read a few of Tierney's other works

in my studies on the Middle Ages. He has some excellent collections of source material on various subjects related to the intellectual developments which informed values, institutions, etc. during that time period.

What makes these works so good is his essays at the beginning of each section of documents. Very, very good in themselves.

I added this particular work to your call for books with religious topics because of the historical development of the association of Freedom of Conscience with Natural Rights.


There are just too many good books out there, and not enough time. :D

[Leontius]

6. Two that I'm doing a bit of re-reading are

"Rabbi Paul" by Bruce Chilton and "The Reformation" by Diarmaid MacCulloch.

[Thats my opinion]

7. "The Heart of Christianity" Marcus Borg

If you are interested in what modern progressive Christians are thinking, try this book and quit holding that Christianity is epitomized in e fundamentalists' narrow outdated ravings.

[struggle4progress]

13. I haven't read it. I did like Borg-Crossan "The First Paul" which I read in May

The First Paul (Marcus Borg & John Crossan)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=280164

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. "Christ on Trial" by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

This was the Lenten study for my parish. It looks at the four accounts of Jesus' trial and execution in each of the Gospels and discusses the different emphases that each story has and the emotional significance of them.

The summer reading book was "Take This Bread" (I forget the author's name.) It's about a woman who was brought up secular but somehow felt drawn to an Episcopal church in San Francisco and ended up founding a meal program that eventually had branches all over the city.

[struggle4progress]

18. "Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion" by Sara Miles, maybe?

If so, it looks interesting

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. Yes, that's the one

I actually know the clergy in the book, since they were chaplains at the university where I went to grad school.

[struggle4progress]

22. I'll get and read this book. The google excerpts suggest it's exactly the kind of theology

I find helpful

[struggle4progress]

25. Here's a 2007 PBS story about Miles

PROFILE: Sara Miles
May 25, 2007
Episode no. 1039
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1039/profile.html

I grabbed a copy of "Take this Bread" and read it this morning. Miles writes very smoothly, and the book is an easy read at around 300pp. It's well worth the few hours it takes to get through: I think she discusses a number of practical and psychological issues insightfully

"Shut up," he explained is, of course, a famous literary line that she steals without any shame

[frogmarch]

19. Frazer's The Golden Bough

http://www.bartleby.com/196/

The Golden Bough

A Study in Magic and Religion

Sir James George Frazer

A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource.

~~
My daughter bought me this book years ago, and although I've never read it straight through from beginning to end, I think I've read it all. I think it's a fascinating book.

Edited to add that the book (in its entirety, I think) can be read at the link.

[struggle4progress]

21. I must say I never read the final twelve volume version, though I read a thousand or so page

version (perhaps a reprint of one of the early editions) thirty-some years ago. I was impressed with it at the time, but I had Jungian prejudices and an ideological commitment to universal archetypes back then. My tastes changed later. Reading the full twelve volumes might be a fun project for a long snowed-in winter

[frogmarch]

23. Frazer’s approach

was anthropological; that is, materialistic. For instance, he correlated death and rebirth myths with the seasonal growing cycle of plants. I suppose Jung would have correlated these myths with something purely psychological, like the fluctuating influence of the ego. Or something.

I found a lot of good ideas for short stories in Frazer’s book, and I had fun writing a few. I still turn to it for inspiration when I feel like writing a story about something that's a bit out of the ordinary.

Edited to add a period where one should be.

[struggle4progress]

24. I didn't say Frazer was a Jungian; I said I had liked the book because it has the flavor

of Jungian archetypes. The book is sometimes criticized, in fact, for Frazer's attempt to group various mythological stories into a handful of "universal" classes: one question might be whether these "universal" core stories really exist, or whether Frazer was just collating versions that reflected his own predispositions, or whether the Europeans who collected the story-versions, that Frazer later used, had heard and understood and distorted the stories through some common cultural lens

Frazer was quite influential at the time, and I might suspect his work led directly to more Freudian pieces, such as Otto Rank's Myth of the Birth of the Hero, which also wants to see a "universal" class in a collection of disparate myths

If you're looking for story ideas, maybe the Zimmer-Campbell book "The King and the Corpse?" has some interesting stories

[frogmarch]

28. I didn't mean to suggest I thought you said Frazer was a Jungian.

I've read a few criticisms of the Franzer book, and as I recall, they're similar to those you mentioned. I read the criticisms after I'd read the book, and I remember agreeing with some of them in a general way; that is, from a layperson's perspective. I didn't attempt a scholarly analysis of the work; I simply enjoyed reading about the various myths Frazer described. His frequent use of the word "savages" bugged me, but it did serve to remind me of just how old the book is and how much certain attitudes have changed since it was published.

Thank you for recommending the Zimmer-Campbell book. I'll look for it!

[white_wolf]

26. I thought I'd add a few books I'm reading. These are all on Buddhism, though.

The one I'm currently reading is called "In The Buddha's Words." It is anthology of discussions from the Pali Cannon organized by theme. The author who is a Buddhist monk gives his commentary as well as some historical context.

One I read awhile back that was very good for basic information on Buddhism was "Good Question, Good Answer." It was written by a Buddhist monk to answer basic questions on Buddhism. It's available online here: http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/gqga-4ed.pdf

[struggle4progress]

27. Thanks for the link. It's an interesting summary that explains some Buddhist ideas clearly

The Buddhist psychology seems quite insightful to me

Although I'm not much taken with the illustrations, the introductory pages of "Masters of Enchantment" (tr Keith Dowman, illus Robert Beer) tell an informative story:

... In 1969 I had my last LSD trip ... When I came around I knew the world would never be the same ... There was only myself .. but this "me" was no longer a solid and definite identity ... Different parts of my body .. would go numb for long periods of time. My personality would constantly disintegrate ... I lived in constant fear ... This condition lasted for many years ... In 1970 I went to India ... For the next six years I lived in India and Tibet ... One day I was persuaded to take a ten day course ... given by a Burmese teacher named Goenka ... I described my condition to him. There was a moment's silence and then he burst into laughter ... He asked some very direct questions which indicated that he truly understood ... and then went on to explain that my experience of reality was as it was, and that I should learn not .. to take myself too seriously ...

There's a somewhat more systematic lay discussion of ego disintegration as part of enlightment in DE Harding's "On having no head: Zen and the rediscovery of the obvious"

Nowadays, though, I rather prefer texts like

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=287756

[Manifestor_of_Light]

29. "In the Buddha's Words" is the place to start.

Bhikkhu Bodhi is a Westerner who has new translations out of all the basic discourses, except that he has not finished translating the Numbered Discourses.

I was baffled where to start reading in Buddhism, and "In the Buddha's Words" is where I have started. Buddhism is deep stuff.

I was in college in the 1970s and the only Buddhism books by westerners that I knew about were those by Alan Watts. He seemed to be rather egotistical and non-informative except for telling us about Western duality and that meditation was not just sitting on your ass. There was really nothing i could find in print about other forms of Buddhism.

Another good short book is "What the Buddha Taught". "Good question, Good answer" is useful too.

Good pamphlet: THE BUDDHA AND HIS DHAMMA, Bhikkhu Bodhi, pub. The Buddhist Association of the United States, 2004.

www.baus.org