Four Testaments brings together four foundational texts from world religions―the Tao Te Ching, Dhammapada, Analects of Confucius, and Bhagavad Gita―inviting readers to experience them in full, to explore possible points of connection and divergence, and to better understand people who practice these traditions. Following Brian Arthur Brown’s award-winning Three Testaments: Torah, Gospel, Quran, this volume of Four Testaments features essays by esteemed scholars to introduce readers to each tradition and text, as well as commentary on unexpected ways the ancient Zoroastrian tradition might connect Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism, as well as the Abrahamic faiths. Four Testaments aims to foster deeper religious understanding in our interconnected and contentious world.
Francis X. Clooney, S.J., is Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at Harvard Divinity School.
Victor H. Mair is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is the co-editor of
Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader (Bloomsbury, 2022).
Arvind Sharma is Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Canada. He has held fellowships at the Center for the Study of World Religions, the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, and the Center for Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University, and at the Brookings Institute. He also received a Maxwell Fellowship and was elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, London. His publications include Hinduism and Human Rights (2004) and Hinduism On Its Own Terms (2016). He is also the general editor of the Encyclopedia of Indian Religions (2017).
Arvind Sharma has been a member of the faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University since 1987. He has held fellowships at the Center for the Study of World Religions, the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, and the Center for Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University, and at the Brookings Institute. He also received a Maxwell Fellowship and was elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, London. He is the author of Are Human Rights Western? (2006) and Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology (2005).