This innovative work documents the literary gesture that ’fetishizes tradition, ’ making long-standing religious traditions appear present and available through the reading experience. Taking as examples Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the Gospel of Mark, the
Sūtra on the Land of Bliss (
Sukhāvatīvyūha), and the
Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (
Liuzu tanjing), Alan Cole shows how these texts invite readers into the fantasy that they can leave behind tradition’s established rites, rituals, sacrifices, institutions, and festivals in order to take up just the text and its narrative as the key to salvation. Ironically, then, one’s salvation is determined by how one receives the (new) message of salvation. Crucial to making these more virtual forms of tradition appear plausible is the reconstruction of tradition’s ’truth-fathers’—God or the Buddha, as the case may be—so that they appear to endorse the legitimacy of these new ways of being traditional. Relying on a wide body of critical theory, this book presents an intriguing way to rethink key elements in Christian and Buddhist thought.
Innehållsförteckning
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Fetishes and the Spirit of Religious Studies
1. Methodology and a World of Commentary
2. Paul’s Letters, or How God Became a Jewish Priest
3. The Gospel of Mark, or Narrative as Floating Patriarchy
4. The
Sũtra on the Land of Bliss, or That Place between Tongues and Texts
5. The
Platform Sũtra of the Sixth Patriarch, or Paternal Truth for the Masses
Conclusions: The Limits of Fetishizing Tradition
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Om författaren
Alan Cole is an independent scholar and the author of
Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism;
Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahāyāna Buddhist Literature; and
Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism.
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