Customer Reviews

The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading (Faith Meets Faith)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is an amazing accomplishment. Daring and yet solid in its scholarship, it is a readable account that will change both my scholarly approach to future topics and my personal christology. A wonderful achievement.

Keenen uses Buddhist categories (such as "dependent co-arising") to examine Jesus' message in Mark. It is a useful way of analyzing the ways that those who encounter Jesus try to close the rift in the universe that Jesus opens. People want categories to put Jesus in, be it revolutionary, or kind man, or even guru. But one thing that seems to be true about Jesus is that he cracks open whatever category you approach him with. He will not be put in an analytical box, and that can make people very angry.

Yet, Keenen will not fall into the trap of equating this with radical postmodernism. He wants us to empty ourselves of interpretive assumptions, but this is not to just adopt a nihilistic stance of opposition to everything. His analysis of the Geraseme demoniac (which he retitles "Emptiness Ineptly Grasped") illustrates this well.