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This collection of essays explores the impact of Jesus within and beyond Christianity, including his many afterlives in literature and the arts, social just and world religions during the past two thousand years and especially in the present global context.
This third volume focuses on the diverse afterlives of Jesus within contemporary culture and the arts. Moving beyond the explicitly religious afterlives traced in the first two volumes, this set of essay traces selected afterlives of Jesus within Indigenous cultures around the Pacific, as well as in the arts and in the contested fields of gender and sexuality. The contributors include religion scholars from diverse cultural contexts, as well as faith practitioners reflecting on Jesus within their own particular context. While the essays are all grounded in critical scholarship, reflective practice, or both, they are expressed in nontechnical language that is accessible to interested nonspecialists.

Cascade Books

Westar Studies

Cultural Afterlives of Jesus: Jesus in Global Perspective 3

Jack N. Lightstone

Over the first eight centuries CE, the religious cultures of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and many European lands transformed. Worship of "the gods" largely gave way to the worship of YHWH, the God of Israel, under Christianity and Islam, both developments of contemporary Judaism, after Rome destroyed Judaism's central shrine, the Jerusalem Temple, in 70 CE. But concomitant changes occurred within contemporary Judaism. The events of 70 wiped away well-established Judaic institutions in the Land of Israel, and over time the authority of a cadre of new "masters" of Judaic law, life, and practice, the "rabbis," took hold. 

What was the core, professional-like profile of members of this emerging cadre in the late second and early third centuries, when this group first attained a level of stable institutionalization (even if not yet well-established authority)? What views did they promote about the authoritative basis of their profile? What in their surrounding and antecedent sociocultural contexts lent prima facie legitimacy and currency to that profile? Geared to a nonspecialist readership, What Were the Early Rabbis? addresses these questions and consequently sheds light on eventual shifts in power that came to underpin Judaic communal life, while Christianity and Islam "Judaized" non-Jews under their expansive hegemonies.

What Were the Early Rabbis?: An Introduction from a Sociocultural Perspective

This collection of essays explores the impact of Jesus within and beyond Christianity, including his many afterlives in literature and the arts, social justice, and world religion during the past two thousand years and especially in the present global context. 
This second volume focuses on the diverse interfaith afterlives of Jesus. Moving beyond the explicitly Christian afterlives traced in volume one, this set of essays explores how Jesus has significant afterlives in Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Ruism and Mormonism, as well as selected secular afterlives in progressive Christianity. The contributors include religion scholars from the respective traditions, as well as faith practitioners reflecting on Jesus within their own religious context. While the essays are all grounded in critical scholarship, reflective practice, or both, they are expressed in nontechnical language that is accessible to interested nonspecialists.

Interfaith Afterlives of Jesus: Jesus in Global Perspective 2

This collection of essays explores the impact of Jesus within and beyond Christianity, including his many afterlives in literature and the arts, social justice and world religions during the past two thousand years and especially in the present global context. 
This first volume focuses on selected historical afterlives of Jesus, including the Pantokrator of Byzantium and the Aryan Jesus of Nazi Germany. This collection is not an exercise in Christian apologetics, nor is it an interfaith project--except in the sense that many of the contributors are from a Christian context of some kind, while others are from other contexts. The contributors include scholars in relevant fields, as well as religious practitioners reflecting on Jesus in their own cultural and religious settings. While the essays are original work that is grounded in critical scholarship, reflective practice, or both, they are expressed in nontechnical language so the information is accessible to intelligent nonspecialists.

Historical Afterlives of Jesus: Jesus in Global Perspective 1

Richard Q. Ford

The psychological process of denial involves refusing to see what is in front of us, and for some time we have been struggling to shape master narratives to encompass climate breakdown. Jesus' longer parables offer insight into the possibilities that are hidden within the hierarchies of power. Through the work of understanding the experiences of all the parable actors, we are invited to practice the empathy required to face the global challenges of the twenty-first century.

Jesus' Parables Speak to Power and Greed: Confronting Climate Change Denial

Shirley Paulson

Buried for more than a thousand years in the sands of Egypt, the Secret Revelation of John has stayed a secret far longer than it should have. Even now, more than seventy-five years after its discovery in 1945, it eludes easy understanding even as it shines with the message of God's loving presence amid suffering and violence. Illuminating the Secret Revelation of John is the first study written for the curious public, as well as for scholars who have not yet plumbed its depths. The ancient Secret Revelation of John unearths three gems of healing wisdom that have been encrusted in a millennium of doubt and theological limitation. This new work explores the many facets of these gems with a historical setting and background, a contemporary paraphrase, and a study section that invites pondering of and conversation about new questions to explore.

Illuminating the Secret Revelation of John: Catching the Light

In the Seat of Moses offers readers a unique, frank, and penetrating analysis of the rise of rabbinic Judaism in the late Roman period. Over time and through masterly rhetorical strategy, rabbinic writings in post-temple Judaism come to occupy an authoritarian place within a pluralistic tradition. Slowly, the rabbis occupy the seat of Moses, and Lightstone introduces readers to this process, to the most significant texts, to the rhetorical styles and appeals to authority, and even to how authority came to be authority. As a seasoned and honest scholar, Lightstone achieves his goal of introducing novice readers to the often obscure world of rabbinic literary conventions with astounding success. This book is an excellent contribution to the Westar Studies series focused on religious literacy.

In the Seat of Moses: An Introductory Guide to Early Rabbinic Legal Rhetoric and Literary Conventions

Burton L. Mack

Human societies live and breathe through their myths. A myth is not a simple story; it is the complex social reasoning of a people, a way of making sense of the world. Burton Mack calls this reasoning "social logic, " and as a master of ancient Rome and the rise of Christianity, he knows that the Western experience has been embedded in the Christian myth as its "big picture" narrative. But what happens when the big picture becomes fragmented and when an old myth loses its ability to function in a new world order? Mack is convinced that at the heart of contemporary political crises lies the need to create a new myth beyond the grand narratives and lingering fragments history has given us. Mack invites his reader to think historically about the present, and imaginatively about the future, in this important book about ourselves.

Critical Times for America: The Politics of Cultural Amnesia

Dominic Kirkham

Civilization is often equated with the story of human advancement and progress. Yet it is also the story of human oppression, exploitation, war, and empire. In our own time, modern global civilization has brought us to the brink of planetary destruction. By offering an understanding of our past, this book aims to provide a stimulus to considering a different future. Our Shadowed World considers how we have been brought to this point. It describes how the fragmented and conflicted state of humanity has "progressed" from the earliest city-states to the devastation of world war and holocaust--how civilization has brought its own form of savagery.

What beliefs have underlain and motivated human action? How have humans tried to understand their world? Driven by the relentless quest for power, by greed, and by extreme beliefs, the human enterprise today has placed the very idea of civilization under threat, the subject of radical questioning. Despite a new ecological awareness dedicated to saving the planet from civilization's carelessness, and a preoccupation with the nature of apocalyptic thinking, a question mark looms over the very survival of humanity in its present state--a question mark that now overshadows the world.

Our Shadowed World: Reflections on Civilization, Conflict, and Belief

The Westar Studies series offers distinctive scholarly publications on topics related to the field of Religious Studies. The studies seek to be multi-dimensional both in terms of the subject matter addressed and the perspective of the author. Westar Studies are not related to Westar seminars but offer scholars a deliberate space of free inquiry to engage both scholarly peers and the public. 



Series Editor:

David Galston