The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad As Religious Founders

Rating:
Summary: An excellent contemporary review
Review: Contributions from the best contemporary thinkers provide explorations of the lives and beliefs of the five founders of major world religions: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad. These essays provide new insights into the careers of these individuals, blending biography with spiritual insights. An excellent contemporary review.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent (and Much Needed Just Now)
Review: There has never been a time when interreligious understanding was more needed. And I don't have in mind only the atrocities committed at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and what seems to be, as I write, an impending war. It's trite to say, but true, that the vast geographical distances that once separated the great religions from one another have vanished, both figuratively in the sense that modern transportation and communication technologies have rendered them insignificant and literally in the sense that, given modern immigration patterns, Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and Confucianists and Sikhs are very likely to be living in the same neighborhoods with Jews and Christians. It is imperative that we learn to understand one another better.

This book is an important step in that direction. By presenting academically serious, reliable, but still sympathetic portraits of the five great religious founders, it provides a basis for genuine dialogue between the faiths. It is an excellent book. The authors are first-rate, and the writing is generally clear and occasionally even quite good.

I wish it weren't so expensive, but I hope that it will nonetheless have a large readership. I recommend it enthusiastically.