Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now
Unveiling Empire aims to be a fresh look, with new insights and interpretations, at the apocalyptic visions described in The Book of Revelation.’
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Issue: Current challenges
The Trouble with Resurrection: From Paul to the Fourth Gospel
The term resurrection has come to stand for what Christianity is all about. But a close look reveals that it should not be understood monolithically, but rather as a pluralistic and diverse phenomenon. Early Christian communities were convinced that Rome had not defeated Jesus when they crucified him. They employed a whole host of metaphors to express that conviction. The use of the single term resurrection to cover the phenomenon is a mistake-one that has tyrannized Christianity. Furthermore, most Christians believe in a physical resurrection, although Paul clearly calls this into question. Once that tradition became fixed, it provided the lens through which everything else was viewed-and distorted. The purpose of this book is not to say whether Jesus arose from the grave on the third day, or whether such an event is impossible. Rather, by examining the so-called resurrection stories in chronological order, it aspires to prompt readers to consider questions such as; what does the New Testament really say about the resurrection; what is the influence of Judaism on Christian belief in the resurrection; how did the resurrection become the central belief in Christianity; why did early Christians choose to believe in the resurrection; and why is resurrection not the right word.
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The Myths We Live By
Mary Midgley argues in her powerful new book that far from being the opposite of science, myth is a central part of it. In brilliant prose, she claims that myths are neither lies nor mere stories but a network of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world.
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The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently — and Why
When Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment…and the different “seeings” are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people actually think – and even see – the world differently, because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China, and that have survived into the modern world.
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The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and the New Laws of Nature
Time, the fundamental dimension of our existence, has fascinated artists, philosophers, and scientists of every culture and every century. All of us can remember a moment as a child when time became a personal reality, when we realized what a year was, or asked ourselves when now happened. Common sense says time moves forward, never backward, from cradle to grave. Nevertheless, Einstein said that time is an illusion. Nature’s laws, as he and Newton defined them, describe a timeless, deterministic universe within which we can make predictions with complete certainty. In effect, these great physicists contended that time is reversible and thus meaningless.
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