Religious Reading The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion

by Griffiths, Paul J.

• ISBN13: 9780195125771
• ISBN10: 0195125770
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-13
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

What social conditions and intellectual practices are necessary in order for religious cultures to flourish? Paul Griffiths finds the answer in "religious reading" --- the kind of reading in which a religious believer allows his mind to be furnished and his heart instructed by a sacred text, understood in the light of an authoritative tradition. He favorably contrasts the practices and pedagogies of traditional religious cultures with those of our own fragmented and secularized culture and insists that religious reading should be preserved.

Author Biography

Paul J. Griffiths is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion in the University of Chicago's Divinity School.

Table of Contents

Religion	3	(19)
Religion and Literary Work	22	(38)
The Context of Religious Reading	60	(17)
The Fundamental Genres of Religious Reading	77	(32)
Commentary and Anthology in Buddhist India	109	(39)
Commentary and Anthology in Roman Africa	148	(34)
Conclusion	182	(7)
Notes	189	(16)
Index	205