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Patrology: The Lives and Works of the Fathers of the Church
By Otto Bardenhewer translated by Thomas J. Shahan 1908. First of all, this book was not written for the casual reader. It is a great handbook to learn about the first five centuries of the Christian Church. It is full of rich references and copious notes that is a delight to the researcher or historian. Any person with a strong interest in early Christian history would find this book informative. The writer makes the assumption that the reader has a basic understanding of Greek, Latin, and the Bible. In describing the early writers he starts with a short bio and then follows it up with what works they wrote. He mentions which writings are still extant and which ones may have been erroneously attributed. One of the things that jumped out at me was how much material has been written in the past compared to how little has been preserved. I was led to believe that the reason a lot of old writings are no longer available, is because the “church” destroyed them. Well, why wasn’t the church able to save so many important documents of their own? Then I got to thinking about how even we, the United States…
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Studies in Japanese Buddhism
By August Karl Reischauer 1917 This book was a good primer to Buddhism. Now before I get too far along, this book is not a catechism of the Buddhist faith, but rather a history of Buddhism and how it relates to Japan as of the early 20th century. Knowing very little personally of Buddhism and Japanese history and culture, this book was very informative. The author starts with a solid background of Buddha and the early religion. One cannot understand Gautama (Buddha) without having some idea of the times in which he lived. The path of Buddhism travels across the Asian continent where it is modified and changed by various other beliefs. Eventually around a thousand years later it reaches Japan as Mahayana Buddhism. There it is confronted with Shinto and adapts to rule as the state religion over a thousand years. This takes us to more modern time being the 19th century where Japan has its own Reformation and as of the writing of this book, Buddhism was in a decline and was trying to identify and adapt to a modern materialistic world. I want to finish with a few of what the author called “Buddhist Gold Nuggets”.…