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A pioneering study of the startlingly original films by Chinese filmmakers of the 1980s, such as Judou, Raise the Red Lantern, and Farewell My Concubine. These films bring into vivid relief changes in Chinese society over several decades, drawing on interviews with directors including Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang.
Paul Clark's Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 was a groundbreaking book, and in Reinventing China, Clark continues his exploration of the changes in Chinese society and culture since the 1960s.
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- Author a 'non-believing Christian'
- One Trick Pony, but what a trick!
- Will the Real Paul please stand up?
- Gager - required reading for the student of Paul
- Brilliant Insight, But Only Half the Story
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Reinventing Paul
John G. Gager
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0195150856 |
Book Description
Throughout the Christian era, Paul has stood at the center of controversy, accused of being the father of Christian anti-Semitism. In this highly accessible book, John Gager challenges this entrenched view of Paul, arguing persuasively that Paul's words have been taken out of their original context, distorted, and generally misconstrued. Using Paul's own writings, Gager brilliantly sets forth a controversial interpretation of the apostle's teaching as he takes us in search of the "real" Paul. Through an exhaustive analysis of Paul's letters to the Galatians and the Romans, he provides illuminating answers to the key questions: Did Paul repudiate the Law of Moses? Did he believe that Jews had been rejected by God and replaced as His chosen people by Gentiles? Did he consider circumcision to be necessary for salvation? And did he expect Jews to find salvation through Jesus? Gager tells us that Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles, not the Jews. His most vehement arguments were directed not against Judaism but against competing apostles in the Jesus movement who demanded that Gentiles be circumcised and conform to Jewish law in order to be saved. Moreover, Paul relied on rhetorical devices that were familiar to his intended audience but opaque to later readers of the letters. As a result, his message has been misunderstood by succeeding generations.
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Author a 'non-believing Christian'.......2005-05-12
John Gager and his colleagues have done a service in removing the image of Paul being the father of anti-semitism, and helps foster improved Jewish-Christian relations. However, he misses the major theme in Paul's letters - the centrality of Christ and the cross in his theology of the Word.
Gager proposes the two-way theory, that the law is the means of salvation for the Jews, and Christ is the way of salvation for Gentiles. However, he is quite selective in his use of quotations, and ignores the 2000-year history of the expectancy of Israel for the Messiah. Paul and the Gospel writers assert that Jesus is the Messiah, that salvation for both Jew and Greek is Jesus Christ [Galatians 3:26-29, Romans 10:10-12, 10:17].
What I find most troubling is that Gager is reading the Holy Bible to make a socio-political statement, rather than reading the Bible for inspiration and spirituality. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, recommends we read the Bible with the hermeneutics of faith. The Gospel brings the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes in Jesus Christ.
But then, perhaps that is to be expected, as he styles himself a non-believing Christian. Gager missing this central point leaves one questioning his every statement.
One Trick Pony, but what a trick!.......2004-09-16
"Reinventing Paul" is John Gager's attempt to solve one of the most vexing problems of New Testament scholarship: Saint Paul's seeming anti-Judaism, if not outright anti-Semitism. The view that Paul (and God!) turned against his own people had been considered self-evident to a long line of scholars and theologians stretching back at least to St. Augustine. But the history of the 20th century, soaked copiously with the blood of innocent Jews, made many New Testament scholars hope that a less Jew-hating Paul could be salvaged from Paul's writing.
Gager reviews the roots of traditional view of Paul -- the "obvious" view discerned by the casual modern reader of the New Testament. Saul/Paul in this view is an observant Jew who is converted to Christianity by a miraculous experience of the Risen Christ, and who then proceeds to condemn his own people based on their "rejection" of Jesus as the promised Messiah. Gager re-examines this view in the light of new scholarship and new attitudes since the Shoah. How can Paul, he asks, "convert" to a faith that does not yet exist? Paul's conversion is an event that is "read back" into his story based on the post-70 CE split of Judaism and Christianity. Paul, whose Damascus Road experience dates to the years immediately following Christ's crucifixion in 30 CE, would not have thought of his experience as a conversion *from* Judaism, but at most from one expression of Judaism to another.
But what of Paul's seeming citations against Jews and Judaism? Gager's thesis is that Paul's enemies were not Christ-denying Jews, but Christ-*affirming* Jews within the Jesus movement. To Paul, these Jewish-born Christians misunderstood the meaning of Christ's death, which to Paul was the way that God extended salvation from the Jews to the Gentiles. Read in this light, a citation like "The Jew has no advantage and circumcision is of no value" (Romans 3:1) does not signal God's rejection of Jews, but that Gentiles need not become Jews to gain salvation.
Gager's thesis is sound and based on a sensible reading of the New Testament. However, Gager works too hard to show how much better his thesis is than that of his predecessors. The book is also much too long, repeating the same points ad nauseum. In spite of these faults, I found "Reinventing Paul" to be a valuable contribution that makes Paul's thinking not only tolerable but even laudatory.
Will the Real Paul please stand up?.......2003-07-10
Gager could perhaps be starting a quest similar in intent if not in form to that of the Jesus Seminar, namely, the search for the 'real' Paul, or at least the 'real meaning' of Paul. Paul has been reinterpreted and recast in many ways over the past 2000 years, for denominational and sociological reasons. To build upon Schweitzer's observations about the changing images of Jesus, just as each age reinterprets Jesus to, in one way or another, recast Jesus in the image of that age, so too does Paul undergo a similar change. What Gager is doing, however, is not merely reinterpreting the meaning of Paul -- he is offering a new way of asking the interpretative questions, offering a paradigm shift that casts doubts upon traditional interpretations and offers a new way of thinking about the texts. Once we begin to question not just specific texts or issues within that paradigm, but the paradigm itself, nothing in the old model makes sense. (Gager, p. 145)
The Traditional View
Gager specifically does not want to start a 'Quest for the Historical Paul' a la the Jesus Seminar model, but does feel that re-examination is necessary to shift emphasis away from traditionally-held views of Paul. Even if such a search for the 'real' Paul is not undertaken, due to the lack of 'reality' in such a search, this does not mean that there are not bad interpretations, even wrong ones when it comes to examining Pauline literature for intent, background, and context. (Gager, pp. vii-viii)
Traditionally, Paul is turned into a sort of universal preacher; the particular advice and conversations he has in his letters to specific communities made into universally applicable principles and precepts. Gager disputes the authority of each of these assumptions, and puts forward arguments against each of these assumptions within the framework of his new paradigm.
The New View
Gager sees the fundamental mis-understanding of Paul (a mis-understanding of centuries-long standing) to be primarily focussed upon the context of audience of Paul. Working from scholars who in various ways began to challenge basic assumptions (albeit, incompletely, Gager would argue) such as Kirster Stendahl, Lloyd Gaston, and E.P. Sanders, Gager sets up criteria which must be kept in mind when examining any passage or writing of Paul's. These include the realisation that Paul remained a Jew throughout his life, adhering to the context of traditional Jewish thought; Paul's 'conversion' was not from one religion to another (for, arguably, Christianity as a separate religion could be said not to have existed at this point) but rather a transformation of thought fully within the framework of the same religion (namely, Judaism); and primarily, that Paul must be seen as the apostle to the Gentiles, with specific intent to speak to the Gentiles in a way that would make sense to them. Paul was not concerned with Jews or Jewish-Jesus movement people (except insofar as they impacted and/or interfered with his own ministries). Even when Paul speaks in the synagogues, this speaking was primarily intended for the Gentile audience. Gentiles frequented synagogues throughout the Greco-Roman world. (Gager, p. 51)
This argues against the universality of Paul's messages as is held in the traditional view. If one takes the context of speaking to Jews, or of speaking to all of humanity which includes Jews, out of the paradigm, and concentrates on the message for Gentiles, and read as such, many (but not all) of Paul's apparent contradictions fall away. Likewise, a Paul who is seen to have remained completely within the framework of Judaism, with honour and respect for the Torah as it applies to the Jews, can be seen as less the fountainhead of Christian anti-Judaism. Christian readers no longer feel compelled to insulate Paul from Judaism, while Jewish readers no longer strive to protect Judaism from Paul. (Gager, p. 57)
A Lingering Doubt
Gager claims a certain theological purity -- my fundamental concern is historical and that my primary goal is to get it right, Gager claims. (Gager, p. 18) He claims that he doesn't have the specific intent of proving any particular denominational or theological viewpoint correct. This may or may not be correct. Clearly as Gager speaks of the reasons why a reinterpretation of Paul might be needed -- the Nazi Holocaust, together with the founding of the state of Israel, account for the possibility of reading Paul in a new way -- he has an agenda which is he is trying to promote, however subtle that promotion may be. This is, of course, an agenda which would be welcomed at this seminary, with its strong emphasis on Jewish-Christian dialogue and relationship.
But is this reinterpretation really a reinvention? Is this so much a radical shift of paradigm (as Gager likes to think it is), or more of a logical next-step in the progression of modern studies as the underlying assumptions of most everything (from physics to medicine to history to mathematics to art and music and much more) have come under scrutiny in the modern (and, as some like to say, post-modern) era? While Gager's insights and analyses are welcome, perhaps they are not quite the sound-barrier-breaking ideas that he wishes they were.
And what of the traditional views? Even if thoroughly discounted and discredited in Gager's paradigm, we again run into a similar as the Jesus Seminar and its critics. How can we state the Holy Spirit has had charge of the image of Jesus through two millenniums, and thus it is the traditional Jesus who is most 'real', but, on the other hand, the traditional Paul cannot be most 'real'? Where was the Holy Spirit in this regard? Can the Holy Spirit only take charge of one?
Gager - required reading for the student of Paul.......2001-08-14
Gager's text, "Reinventing Paul" is perhaps mislabeled, as he does less re-inventing than "recovering." With the sort of exasperation characteristic of E.P. Sanders' in "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" Gager dismantles, by way of a thorough review of recent Pauline scholarship, the age-old distortions of Paul and first century Judaism that have plagued Christianity from the outset.
His dismay is easily understood as he makes plain the way that Paul, the "Apostle to the Gentiles" was forced into the role of "Paul, critic of all that is Jewish." (my phrase) Indeed, the only regret that I had as I read his book was that he seemed unaware of the groundbreaking work of Mark Nanos' "The Mystery of Romans." Nanos' work would only have bolstered Gager's conclusions, but from a Jewish perspective.
It is no longer excusable for Christian students of the New Testament to set Paul up as an opponent of the "straw man" of Pharisaic Judaism created in the late 19th century and utterly discredited by Sanders, George Foote Moore, and Charlotte Klein. In concise form, Gager has catalogued the breaches in the dam of tradition that will, one hopes, lead to its imminent collapse. The hope, however, falters briefly when one reads critiques of Gager's book that seek to cite brief passages from Romans or Galatians once again as support for Paul's rejection of the meaningfulness of Torah for Jews of his day. Still the misrepresentations of the Judaism of that day raise their misshapen heads to perpetuate the abuses of the past.
His analysis of Romans and Galatians, while hardly exhaustive, give us an exciting taste of the benefits of real rhetorical analysis of Paul's letters, without weighing the reader down with excessive jargon. Perhaps the most wonderful bits of the whole book are the footnotes, which lead the reader from his tight digest to a variety of authors whose works explore the questions in much greater detail.
One hopes that Gager's text will become a staple in the teaching establishments of the Church. It would be a shame if any student graduated from a seminary in the next ten years without having read it.
Brilliant Insight, But Only Half the Story.......2001-08-03
John Gager's book "Reinventing Paul" is a long overdue summation of the latest insights into Paul's beliefs and his mission to the Gentiles. Gager and the others are helping to clear away 2,000 years of Christian perversion of Paul's thinking and activity. Here Gager shows that Paul was very much a Jew and remained anchored within the Jewish tradition. He did not repudiate the law of Moses, he did not argue that God had rejected Israel, his enemies were not Jews outside his movement, but opponents within, and he did not expect Jews to abandon the Law and find salvation through Jesus the Christ.
Gager goes to great lengths to show that the debate over circumcision, or whether Gentiles needed to "become" Jewish and themselves followers of the Law, was at the center of the great controversy. Ultimately, of course, Paul said, "No." Paul believed that a spiritual Christ had arrived and could be experienced through faith as the End Time was near. This has happened as a result of God's promise to Abraham that the Gentiles will also be saved. Faith in Christ is the Gentile's way to salvation, while the Jews retain their Law and covenant with God. Paul's doctrine, in other words, is one of inclusion, not exclusion.
Gager does a solid job of proving his points and his reinventing of Paul is long overdue, but the author leaves a few loose ends. He does not go into Paul's vision of the Son and what implications this has for Christianity. If Paul held that the saving experience is "faith" in God's righteousness and justice as manifest through a spiritual Christ, and that Jews can be saved even without the belief in Christ, what does this say of the Christian belief that a living Jesus walked the earth and performed a redemptive act to save mankind? Paul obviously never believed in it! Yet, Gager is silent on these issues. A sound book, in other words, as far as it goes, but it answers only half the questions concerning Paul and his vision. But, this is an important book that needs to be read.
Book Description
How much of science is culturally constructed? How much depends on language and metaphor? How do our ideas about nature connect with reality? Can nature be "reinvented" through theme parks and malls, or through restoration.
Reinventing Nature? is an interdisciplinary investigation of how perceptions and conceptions of nature affect both the individual experience and society's management of nature. Leading thinkers from a variety of fields - philosophy, psychology, sociology, public policy, forestry, and others - address the conflict between perception and reality of nature, each from a different perspective. The editors of the volume provide an insightful introductory chapter that places the book in the context of contemporary debates and a concluding chapter that brings together themes and draws conclusions from the dialogue.
In addition to the editors, contributors include Albert Borgmann, David Graber, N. Katherine Hayles, Stephen R. Kellert, Gary P. Nabhan, Paul Shepard, and Donald Worster.
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Response to Cronon, Uncommon Ground.......2007-04-24
This book was created as a response to William Cronon's edited volume, Uncommon Ground (1995). Cronon's book ultimately has stood the test of time better than this collection, but the two should always be read together. As a unit, they provide both a thoughtful collection of views on the changing definition of "nature" in American life and also a fine historical view of 1990s environmental thinking.
Examines the philosophical roots of our views on nature........1999-08-03
Essays by various authors from a symposia in California, Reinventing Nature looks at where our concepts of nature originate and how very different they can be. Several of the chapters explore some of the naive myths we hold about native peoples, their values, and attitudes toward the land and its resources. An excellent eye-opener for the general reader.
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Reinventing Water and Wastewater Systems: Global Lessons for Improving Water Management
Paul Seidenstat ,
David Haarmeyer , and
Simon Hakim
Manufacturer: Wiley
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ASIN: 047106422X |
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A critical and insightful look at the past, present, and future state of water and wastewater services
In response to the worldwide water crisis foreseen by many experts, Reinventing Water and Wastewater Systems presents practical solutions for making drinking water more affordable and available, as well as strategies for improving water sanitation to satisfy the demands of a growing global population. Through extensive data and case histories, this book demonstrates the potential success of privatizing water delivery and wastewater treatment facilities. In addition, it provides examples of state-of-the-art techniques for achieving higher efficiencies in water infrastructure facilities through reengineering, improved technologies, and quality benchmarking.
Contributed chapters are provided by leading global engineers and economists from such companies as the World Bank, Stone and Weber Consultants, the Atlantis Water Fund, and the Anglian Water Company. Coverage by these experts includes exploring regulatory frameworks, financing the water and wastewater infrastructure, reinventing public sector operations, analyzing the past and future of the global water industry, and examining the restructuring operations in selected U.S. cities.
Reinventing Water and Wastewater Systems: Global Lessons for Improving Water Management is a constructive volume for civil engineers working in water and wastewater treatment, urban and regional planners, and environmental engineers, as well as government administrators overseeing infrastructure and water systems and financial institutions involved with underwriting major water improvement projects.
Book Description
A heated debate is raging over our nation’s public schools and how they should be reformed, with proposals ranging from imposing national standards to replacing public education altogether with a voucher system for private schools. Combining decades of experience in education, the authors propose an innovative approach to solving the problems of our school system and find a middle ground between these extremes.
Reinventing Public Education shows how contracting would radically change the way we operate our schools, while keeping them public and accessible to all, and making them better able to meet standards of achievement and equity. Using public funds, local school boards would select private providers to operate individual schools under formal contracts specifying the type and quality of instruction.
In a hands-on, concrete fashion, the authors provide a thorough explanation of the pros and cons of school contracting and how it would work in practice. They show how contracting would free local school boards from operating schools so they can focus on improving educational policy; how it would allow parents to choose the best school for their children; and, finally, how it would ensure that schools are held accountable and academic standards are met.
While retaining a strong public role in education, contracting enables schools to be more imaginative, adaptable, and suited to the needs of children and families. In presenting an alternative vision for America’s schools, Reinventing Public Education is too important to be ignored.
Customer Reviews:
The Future of American Education lies within this book........1997-04-27
After reading Reinventing Public Education, I believe that the only really hope for the future of American education lies in the contracting approach to public education that the authors describe. This is one of the only books on education I have ever read that understands that the problems with public education in this country have less to do with a lack of standards, poor teaching methods, or inequitable funding, than a system which fails to understand that schools are organizations that can only be successful through organic growth rather than government regulation. This book will appeal to both voucher supporters and ardent defenders of a public education system that is committed to educating all its students
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reinventing social work.......2000-12-21
In an era of censure of social work, the profession diligently seeks to reinvent itself to better serve its constituency. Several models are available and are well presented in the volume. Though almost too much is attempted, particularly recommended are the articles in Part II. When combined with empowerment theory and the strengths-based approach to case management, Reinventing Human Services provides a perspective that holds real hope for change. The situation must improve--it can hardly get worse.
Book Description
This book challenges the myth that individualism necessarily weakens commitments to the common good. It examines environmental and other activist groups in which individualism sometimes enhances political commitment. Rather than criticize individualism and favor a return to "traditional" values, Paul Lichterman examines the untraditional, personalized politics of many recent social movements and invites us to rethink common understandings of commitment, community, and individualism in a post-traditional world.
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Reinventing Democracy ("Political Quarterly" Special Issues)
Manufacturer: Blackwell Pub
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ASIN: 0631202633 |
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Reinventing Public Education
Paul T. Hill
Manufacturer: RAND Corporation
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ASIN: 0833016318 |
Book Description
Proposes a means of taking government bureaucracy out of public schools.
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