Religion and the Body : modern science and the construction of religious meaning /
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This book reflects on the implications of neurobiology and the scientific worldview on aspects of religious experience, belief, and practice. Just as interest in the neurosciences and related fields has burgeoned in contemporary society, interest in the fields of neuroscience and cognitive studies is also growing within the religious studies academy, and reflection on these shifts is well overdue. How do religious practitioners negotiate the interconnection of science and religion? What can the neurosciences add to scholars' understanding of religion and to how humans construct religious meaning? Chapters address these questions by investigating religious experience and authority, the cultural construction and deconstruction of the body, and cross-cultural appropriations of the body.
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1 online resource (285 pages) :
9789004225343 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Prophecy in the ancient Near East : a philological and sociological comparison /
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Since the 1990s there has been an emphasis on the study of ancient Israelite prophecy in its ancient Near East context. Prophecy in the Ancient Near East is the first book-length study that compares prophecy in the ancient Near East by focusing on texts from Mari, the Neo-Assyrian State Archives, and the Hebrew Bible. The author analyzes prophecy in each culture independently before comparisons are made. This method demonstrates how prophecy is a part of the wider system of divination, but also shows where scholarship has unduly imported concepts found in one corpus to the other two. This method, for example, calls into question the supposed link between music and prophecy from the Hebrew Bible to the ancient Near East. This work provides an up-to-date analysis of ancient Near Eastern, including Israelite and Judean, prophecy to scholars and students alike. \'I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in prophecy in Israel and the ancient Near East.\' Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, University of Aberdeen, Review of Biblical Literature \'The content of Jonathan Stökl's book...testifies to the value of the book for the studies of prophecy in the ancient Near East.\' Wojciech Pikor, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, The Biblical Annals
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Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--Oriental Institute, Oxford University, 2009. :
1 online resource (xvi, 297 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004229938 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Testing pluralism : globalizing belief, localizing gods /
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This volume of the Religion and the Social Order series examines the phenomenon of the globalization of religions that has particularly characterized the last fifty years. Historically, religions were relatively tightly connected with territoriality. The advent of relatively inexpensive and relatively accessible air transport has made it possible for groups of significant size to move from their original homelands and resettle in new sites. In contrast to predictions associated with secularization theories that dominated the middle of the twentieth century, today we find that the world's religions continue to provide meaning and value in the lives of their adherents. This volume examines at a global level a variety of such groups and their adjustments.
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1 online resource (244 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004254756 :
1061-5210 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
How prophecy lives /
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Taking its inspiration from the 50th anniversary of the publication of Festinger and others's 1956 seminal and controversial volume When Prophecy Fails , which introduced the notion of \'cognitive dissonance\' as an explanation for how a small group of flying saucer devotees handled the failure of a predicted visit from space aliens, this volume looks at both theoretical and empirical studies of religious groups for whom space beings and civilizations provided an inspiration to prepare for the nearness of events that would trigger \'the end of the world.\' Rather than examining merely the rationales adopted to account for the disappointments associated with such \'failures,\' the core of the present volume seeks to explore the dynamics that inspire not only such beliefs but also the vigorous participation in activities in which adherents engage to prepare for the coming of (or transport to) alien civilizations from \'outer space.\'
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Publ. on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication "When prophecy fails" by Leon Festinger. :
1 online resource (viii, 191 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004222687 :
1061-5210 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.