Title
Book Review: The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders
Roles
Editor: David Noel Freedman
Editor: Michael J. McClymond
Book Reviewer: Deborah Sommer, Gettysburg College
Document Type
Review
Publication Date
12-2004
Department 1
Religious Studies
Abstract
In his introduction to Rivers of Paradise, David Noel Freedman explains how the book finds a guiding metaphor in a passage from Genesis (2:10–14) that relates how a river emerges from Eden and splits into four different rivers that flow to different parts of the world. He associates these five rivers with five “great personality religions of the world,” which are traditions “originating in and centering around the person, the life and experience, of a single individual—as it happens all of them men” (p. 2). These “founding fathers” are Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad, in that order; no one after them has accomplished anything comparable to their achievements. Rivers is an edited volume of five essays on these figures and their legacies. Of the five “founders” mentioned in the title, I am competent only in primary sources that deal with Confucius, and so I shall focus my comments accordingly. [excerpt]
DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6253.2004.00170_5.x
Recommended Citation
Sommer, Deborah. Review of Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders. Edited by David Noel Freedman and Michael J. McClymond. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001). Journal of Chinese Philosophy 31.4 (December 2004): 549-552.
Comments
Original version is available from the publisher at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6253.2004.00170_5.x/full