Books in the AAR Studies in Religion series

This two volume work is a comprehensive reader in modern philosophical and theological hermeneutics. David E. Klemm has selected essays representing acknowledged classics in hermeneutics and the best modern hermeneutical thinkers. Volume One collects essays on the hermeneutics of texts. Volume Two collects works on the hermeneutics of existence. Each essay is preceded by an informative contextualizing introduction. Included in Volume One are works by: F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Heidegger, Paul Tillich, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gerhard Ebeling, Paul Ricoeur, Norman Perrin, and Robert P. Scharlemann.

Ramakrishna was a nineteenth-century Bengali devotee of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. He assumed the demeanor and dress of a woman, acted like a monkey, a child, a madman, and a comedian at various times during his career. Using the concept of play (lila), as both spontaneous activity and dramatic performance on behalf of Kali, Carl Olson provides a interpretive key for unlocking Ramakrishna''s life and his often contradictory forms of behavior.Olson places Ramakrishna in his social and historical context, examines his relationship to women, and investigates his status as a mystery or stranger to his contemporaries.