Book Review: "Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism" by Daniel Boyarin
Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
12-2001
Disciplines
Comparative Methodologies and Theories | History of Religions of Eastern Origins | History of Religions of Western Origin | Religion
Abstract
Daniel Boyarin has done it again. With this book—a part of the important new Stanford University Press series entitled Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture—he has again provoked, and challenged, and enlightened us. With his usual clear, crisp, and sometimes sharp-edged writing, with his consistently critical engagement of ancient primary and modern and postmodern secondary interpretive texts and theories, Boyarin has forced us to think again and in some respects in radically differently ways and on radically different terms about some important issues. The issue at hand? Only those involved in the "making" of Christianity and Judaism. (So charged even in our times are these issues, and so provocative is Boyarin in setting up the important historical contours of the politics surrounding the issues, that it is impossible not to stop and wonder about what might be for Boyarin the significance of the order of the listing of the two "religious traditions" in the title and what we might read into the order of the listing.)
Rights Information
©2001 American Academy of Religion
Terms of Use & License Information
Recommended Citation
Wimbush, Vincent. "Book Review: 'Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism' by Daniel Boyarin". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 69.4 (2001): 912-913.
