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PARADISE AND PARADIGM an A d

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Key Symbols in Persian Christianity si n
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“If the Bahaµ<iµ Faith has a specialist in comparative
religion, it is Christopher Buck … This volume
is certainly … the best comparative work on the
Bahaµ<iµ Faith and another religious tradition that has
yet appeared, and may serve as a model for future
such studies.” — The Bahaµ<iµ Studies Review
“Christopher Buck’s project is a success both
as a methodological experiment and as practical
comparative effort … As a piece of Bahaµ<iµ
scholarship, it remains unparalleled. In terms
of academic comparative efforts involving
the Bahaµ<iµ Faith, Buck’s book is a pioneering work.”
— H-Bahaµ<iµ
“…the book’s four central chapters offer separate
historical and symbolic profiles, first of Syriac
Christianity and then of the Bahaµ<iµ faith. Buck has
packed these chapters with fascinating detail,
assembling a wealth of background unavailable
elsewhere in any single volume that I am aware of …
Paradise and Paradigm is a goldmine of information
about two relatively little studied but fascinating
developments in Middle Eastern religious history …
a very worthwhile contribution.” — Middle East
Studies Association of North America
“This is a provocative and groundbreaking work.
Its careful attention to methodology and its attempt
to work through the project with the attitude of
experimentation will provide a significant impulse
to the study of religion, especially in relationship
to the symbol systems, which religions contain.”
— University of Toronto Quarterly
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
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Christopher Buck
In a novel approach that the author terms “symbolic
paradigm analysis,” Paradise and Paradigm offers a “theoretically
modular” systematic comparison of two “Persian” religions:
early Syriac Christianity as the foundation of the East Syrian
“Church of the East” (the Nestorian Church of Persia) and
the Bahaµ<iµ Faith, a new world religion. The author compares
the hymns of the greatest poet of early Christianity,
Saint Ephrem the Syrian, and the richly imagistic writings
of the founder of the Bahaµ<iµ religion, Bahaµ<u<llaµh. The book
employs an original analytic technique in the creation of
“symbolic profiles” constructed on Ninian Smart’s dimensional
model of religion. As Buck skillfully demonstrates, formal
similarities between any two religions are best comprehended
in terms of paradigmatic differences, which nuance all parallels
through a process of symbolic transformation. Buck also shows
the communal reflexivity of paradise imagery in representing
the ideal faith-community in both traditions.
“This work is a model of comparison, an eye-opener
regarding the interesting Syriac Christian traditions, and quite
a useful and revealing account of the Bahaµ<iµ.” — William Paden,
University of Vermont
Christopher Buck received a Ph.D. in Religion from the
University of Toronto. He is the author of Symbol and Secret:
Qur<aµn Commentary in Bahaµ<u<llaµh’s Kitaµb-i I÷qaµn, the 1996 Bahaµ<iµ
Book of the Year. Buck is also a two-time recipient of the
Award for Excellence in Bahaµ<iµ Studies, presented by the
Association for Bahaµ<iµ Studies.
402 pages
$27.95 pb ISBN 0-7914-4062-1
$81.50 hc ISBN 0-7914-4061-3
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