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This collection of essays by Robert Funk delves into the contributions of notable artists and intellectuals, including Kafka, Beckett, Henry Miller, Castaneda, Fowles, and Thoreau, to illuminate the true successors of Jesus. In the section titled 'Voices of Silence,' Funk examines the interplay between language and contemporary reality. He ultimately addresses the pivotal theological question of whether individuals can identify a genuine world to which they can fully commit, offering twenty-one propositions on theology in response.

Edited with an Introduction by Bernard Brandon Scott. Robert Funk was the major seminal influence on parable scholarship in the second part of the twentieth century. His work on parable as metaphor led to the understanding of Jesus' parables as world-shattering. But it went beyond the question of metaphor: Funk redefined the form of the parable, made a substantial contribution to the argument that Jesus' parables originated in Greek, worked out a scale for evaluating parables as compositions, and proposed a model for how parables gave birth to resurrection faith. The essays in this volume, brought together for the first time, afford the reader a synoptic view of Funk's contribution—a contribution with which scholarship is only now beginning to deal. Robert W. Funk was a distinguished teacher, writer, translator and publisher in the field of religion. A Guggenheim Fellow and Senior Fulbright Scholar, he served as Annual Professor of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem and as chair of the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. Robert Funk was a recognized pioneer in modern biblical scholarship, having led the Society of Biblical Literature as its Executive Secretary from 1968–1973. His many books include The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (1993) and The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds (1998) (both with the Jesus Seminar) and Honest to Jesus (1996), and A Credible Jesus (2002).