William Cully Allen Livres

"Jesus Among Giants: Religious Biographies in Comparative Context compares and contrasts Jesus to Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, Confucius, Laozi, Moses, and Muhammad in terms of their missions and messages. The foundational religious figures are introduced in their particular socio-political context, on their own terms, in their own words, within the canons of their respective sacred scriptural traditions. Each chapter features the biography of a foundational religious figure, their teachings, a comparative analysis, and a suggestion about what Christians might learn from other foundational religious characters. It is a courageous new approach to comparative religion as a confrontational conference of conflicting claims in search of uncommon insights into truth. It observes striking similarities and discerns distinguishing differences but does not harmonize or hierarchize competing visions into a single coherent version of truth. Rather, it exposes and respects differences for the sake of determining the unique identity of each religious figure featured. There is no avoiding controversy and conflict among the foundational figures of the world's religions. Religious Identities are forged in the face of differences. To adequately appreciate any one spiritual giant requires understanding them all. To know who Jesus is means knowing who he isn't. Readers are invited to face the facts and fictions, myths and messages, claims and counter-claims that clearly distinguish Jesus among giants"-- Provided by publisher

This work illustrates the rules of classical Indian debate literature by presenting new translations of two Sanskrit texts that oppose each other's philosophical traditions. In the third century CE, Vasubandhu, a Buddhist philosopher-monk, argued that the world of lived experience is solely a construct of the mind in his Vimsatika (Twenty Verses). In contrast, the seventh-century Hindu philosopher-priest Kumarila composed Niralambanavada (Non-Sensory Limit Debate) to assert the objective reality of objects, countering Vasubandhu's claim that waking life and dream experiences are indistinguishable. Kumarila employs formal Indian logic to demonstrate the irrationality of Vasubandhu's assertions. Vimsatika is often misunderstood, but Kumarila's critique allows for a contextual reading of it. This re-examination reveals a hermeneutic of humor essential for understanding its deeper message. Vasubandhu's work uses the structure of Sanskrit logic and debate to satirize the entire field of Indian philosophy, challenging existing theories of epistemology and ontology by asserting that both knowledge and the known are products of the imagination.