-Caveat Lector- http://www.sltrib.com/10142000/utah/33022.htm Let's Learn From (and About) Other World Religions, Speaker Says Be it Jesus, Buddha, Moses or Mohammed, understanding the meaning today of the religions they founded requires mining truth from myth and exploring the hearts of the sects' believers, a noted theologian says. Still, it is only Christianity, its holy writ subject to centuries of critical study unparalleled in non-Western religious traditions, that has been examined with unbridled academic freedom, contends James M. Robinson, an emeritus professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. Robinson spoke Thursday at the "Great Religious Teachers and Their Contemporary Relevance" conference hosted by the Center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley State College. In a paper prepared for the conference, Robinson said he lamented that "the founding figure of most ancient religions is so taken up into the mythology of the religion that a distinction can hardly be drawn between fact and fiction. "What can be said about the historical Zarathustra [founder of Zoroastrianism] and [Buddhism's] Gautama, or even Moses and Mohammed, in distinction from the religious image?" he asked. But much can be, and has been, said on the subject regarding Jesus of Nazareth. For at least two centuries since the dawn of the Enlightenment, "Christian origins can be sifted through with some reliability, to distinguish what can be traced back to Jesus himself and what can be best explained as derived from Christian faith," Robinson said. Such academic freedom has not come without heated debate, with fundamentalist Christians denouncing any effort to strip Jesus of his deity and liberal Christians trying to define a so-called "historical Jesus" while applying his message in modern contexts. Still, that such discussion is tolerated and even encouraged about Christianity's roots and applications today remains a rarity for other faiths of antiquity, Robinson said. "One may merely compare the status of the author ofThe Satanic Verses [Salman Rushdie, forced into hiding after Muslim leaders threatened him with death for heresy] in Islam today with the status of members of the Society of Biblical Literature in America [a respected center for critical biblical scholarship]," he said. The relevance of Buddhism to the West was addressed in a paper by California State University's James Santucci, one of several other scholars participating in the two-day conference. The comparative-religion professor maintained that the West, moving toward secularism, may be ripe for the ancient ethical teachings of the Eastern religion. "[Buddhism] represents more of a challenge to those within the Judeo-Christian tradition because of teachings that appear to be counterintuitive to the concept of a religion," Santucci said, noting that Buddhism does not teach the existence of a Supreme Being and differs on the nature of sin. While Judeo-Christian and Islamic teaching is that sin is an act of disobedience to God, Buddhists tend to see sin as more equivalent to action taken out of spiritual ignorance. Both faiths offer rewards for adhering to their founders' teachings: Christianity promises salvation and heaven, while Buddhism holds out hope for an eventual end to the cycle of rebirth and achievement of spiritual purification and bliss, Nirvana. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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