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text reports. It is in the space between text and implication that this studyflourishes. Taylor has explored that space in all its extensions.

The book is an enjoyable study, and it will be an important reference workon the subject for the coming years. It is innovative to place Philos treatise inthe social and cultural ambiance of first-century Alexandria. Taylors analysesare well argued, and her broad background in the history of Judaism outsideAlexandria gives the work an extra dimension for read ers interest ed in Juda -ism. The author gathered a vast amount of modern bibliography in the manyways and byways of her inves tigation. We congratulate her on this resu lt.ANNEWIES VAN DEN HOEK, Harvard Divinity School.

KEENAN, JOHN P. The Wisdom of James: Parallels with Mahayana Buddhism. New-man Press Biblical Studies Series. Mahwah, NJ: Newman, 2005. vi266 pp.$24.95 (paper).

John P. Keenans The Wisdom of James expands his growing body of work thatseeks to read the New Testament with Mahayana Buddhist philosophy as her-meneutic. A lengthy introduction is followed by the authors own translationof the letter of James from the Greek, analyzed piece by piece with commen-tary that, while engaging existing commentaries, defends Keenans own in-sights drawn from reading through a Buddhist lens. Keenan makes good useof his linguistic skills (he knows Greek, Sanskrit, and Japanese) and clearlydemonstrates his command of the Jamesian scholarship as well as MahayanaBuddhist philosophy.

Although acknowledging that James has often been marginalized owing toits differences when compared to the Luke-Acts pattern and Pauline theology,Keenan sees James as important because it is the most extended discussionof wisdom and its implications in the New Testament (1). James representsfor Keenan an early, alternative voice that should be retrieved, one that quite

possibly traveled south and eastward from Palestine, that eventually lost out tothe dominant tradition but regarded itself as the true mother-church of Chris-tendom (10). Although written in Greek, James embodies for Keenan thepossibility of the Christian message elaborated through a non-Greek system(50). The virtues of a Mahayana reading include the possibility of focusing ourattention on ideas otherwise lost, unifying seemingly unrelated passages, andsolving current debates in interpretation.

Keenan understands wisdom in James as apocalyptic, engaged, and as theabandonment of discrimination. For Keenan, the apocalyptic calls into doubthuman measures of the world. Waiting for the coming of the Lord is waitingfor the maturation of wisdom into deeds that will construct a realm of justiceand peace (154).

According to Keenan, James is very concerned with language s role in fos-tering delusions and attachment, offering a critique of religious speech that isdeeper than previous commentators have realized. It empties even the most

cherished categories of religious thought (109). Thus, the absence of doctrin-al content in the letter is deliberate, for it does not propose another view butchanges how we understand all views, leading to true religion.

As with Keenans previous work, readers may continue to worr y about hisappeal to ineffable silence and unmediated experience (e.g., 39, 163). Thereis a formally similar problem with his treatment of Christianity as if it were

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something that can be extracted from any interpretive framework and pluggedat will into Greek, Mahayana, and other mediating systems. I question whetherthe reading of Christian texts can ever be separated fully from Hellenisticculture while remaining Christian in any recognizable sense. He says that heaccepts James as a Christian work, but it is hard to know what he means whenhe also says that it was written before there was any developed body of Chris-tian doctrine to serve as a norm for identifying one as Christian (8) and ad-mits that the text does not contain much, if any, specifically Christian teach-ing (3). Another indication of problems in this area is that, according to myown research, although Keenan purportedly writes in the service of illuminat-ing the Christian message, his moves and conclusions are remarkably similarto many Buddhist inclusivist ones.

One central such move is his use of emptiness as somehow exceptional incomparison to other hermeneutic tools because it alone insists on deconstruct-ing any viewpoint. But is the insistence that such deconstruction is needed notitself a viewpoint? In the claim that the New Testament message is amenableto many philosophical approaches and that no one approach should be takenas more than convention, there is an absolute in that claim itself. Keenan hasresponded to this criticism in the past by denying that such an objection hasfully grasped the meaning of emptiness teaching. Perhaps the matter ultimatelyrests in ones judgment of Nagarju nas succe ss in addressing this d ifficulty.

All of that being said, Keenans work remains some of the most stimulatingand skilled comparative theology available. The Keenan corpus is an impressivesystem, the cumulative effect of which is forceful and coherent. I recommendthis book for those interested in a new approach to James, those whose un-derstanding of Mahayana might be assisted by reference to Christian concepts,and especially those interested in comparative theology done well. Most of myconcerns would be dispelled if Keenan simply framed what he was doing as aninstance of Buddhist inclusivism and then developed the most ideal methodsfor that.

KRISTIN BEISE KIBLINGER, Winthrop University.

WILSON, STEPHEN G. Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity. Min-neapolis: Fortress, 2004. xviii158 pp. $25.00 (cloth).

Wilson begins this study by discussing the origins and various usages of theterms apostasy and apostate. For his own purposes, he defines apostasy asdefection from a religious group (23) and apostates as those who consideredthemselves, or were considered by others, to have abandoned the main prac-tices and/or beliefs of their religious community (22). This he distinguishesfrom heresy, which is dissent but not necessarily departure, and heretics, whooften remain within the communities from which they dissent (11, 18). Thebulk of the book (23109) then applies these definitions to ancient reports ofapostates and possible apostates in order to determine the motives and the

process of apostasy as a sociological and religious phenomenon (see 3). Thesereports span the period from (roughly) the second century BC to the mid-fourth century AD, identifying apostates from Judaism, Christianity, and pa-ganism. In the concluding chapter (11035), Wilson discusses the theoreticalassumptions of several modern writers, both biblical scholars and sociologists,and sums up the main themes of this book.