Guy Couturier

Comptes rendus / Reviews of books: Esaïe 1-12 Edmond Jacob Coll. «Commentaire de l'Ancien Testament», VIIIa Genève, Labor et Fides, 1987. 175 p

The three remaining essays in this section, by Klostermaier, Sivaraman and Arapura, deal, respectively, with the Vaishnava and Shaivasiddhanta traditions and with academic philosophy; it is noteworthy that the last two urge religious dialogue-Sivaraman’s appeal to the Perennial Philosophy is echoed in Arapura’s exploration of philosophers who seek spiritual unity underneath religious diversity. If the first part of this collection demonstrates that Hindu responses to religious pluralism have varied greatly, the second reminds us that, however intolerant some such responses might have been, Hindus do not support active persecution of other religions. If anything, it is the religiously and socially encompassing tendency of Hinduism that has posed serious problems, forcing many nonHindus to engage in what Neufeldt calls &dquo;the process of self-definition.&dquo; Neufeldt argues that the search for a distinct identity has characterized Sikhism from the

Débora : une autorité politicoreligieuse aux origines d'Israël

Guy Couturier est professeur à la faculté de théologie de l’Université de Montréal. 11 est courant de penser que les droits de la femme, dans 1’Antiquite, 6taient beaucoup plus restreints que ceux dont elle jouit dans notre monde moderne. Les roles qu’elle a pu jouer dans cette p6riode reculee de 1’histoire sont difficilement definissables, parce que notre information, a ce propos, est extremement mince; le caractere modeste et sporadique de cette information ref1ète sans doute le peu d’importance qu’on lui a donn6e dans ces soci6t6s anciennes. Sur ce point, est-ce qu’Israel a agi differemment de tous ses voisins? Quel temoignage pouvons-nous recueillir sur le sens et la fonction de la femme dans la somme monumen-

Compte rendu / Review of book: Word Biblical Commentary 19: Psalms 1-50 Peter C. Craigie Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983. Pp. 378

Too much stressing of uniqueness is a scientific ’cop-out,’ a way to hide one’s incapacity to engage in the hard work of counterbalancing rigorous analysis with careful synthesis. Is modern Western historical thinking so pervasive that for instance the dialectical sin/salvation thinking of Christian theologians cannot be reconciled with it? Toynbee after all found his challenge/response interpretation of history replicated in the differentiation/integration or the yang/yin dialectic which in turn is not that different from Walens’ description of some of the basic Kwakiutl metaphors dealing with man-eating/destruction and taming/socialization or hunger/disorder and ’boxness’/integrity. There is certainly nothing in Kwakiutl cosmology as described so competently by Walens which does not fit in a comprehensive social scientific theory of religion. However, in order to discover that, one must be both acquainted with, and interested in, the work by those authors who are not satisfied with keeping diachronic and synchronic approaches in watertight, separate compartments, but who think that both can be elements in a larger theoretical frame of reference. Good analysis after all depends on the approximate fit of the sections to be analyzed in the larger whole. To assume that the part can be analyzed as though it is a whole can lead to major mistakes.