Secrecy and Concealment : Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions /
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This volume deals with secrecy and concealment in the history of mediterranean religions as pattern of social interaction. Secrecy is a powerful means in establishing identity and interaction as G. Simmel has demonstrated. Using his approach the scholars of this volume describe and explain the practical meaning of concealment in two different religious systems: in Egyptian and Greek polytheism and in Jewish, Christian, Gnostic and Shi'i monotheisms. This point of view reveals that all these religions shaped social norms concerning public and private aspects of the human self.
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Proceedings of a meeting held June 1-4, 1993, at the Werner Reimers-Stiftung, Bad Homburg, Germany. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004378872 :
0169-8834 ;
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.
Conceptualizing Religion, Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories.
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How might we transform a folk category - in this case, religion - into an analytical category suitable for cross-cultural research? In addressing that question, this book critically explores various approaches to the problem of conceptualizing religion for scholarly purposes, particularly with respect to certain disciplinary interests of anthropologists. The author argues that the most plausible analytical strategy can be based on the idea of family resemblances, especially as that idea has been used and developed in contemporary prototype theory. In the solution proposed, religion is conceptualized as an affair of 'more or less' rather than a matter of 'yes or no,' and no sharp line is drawn between religion and non-religion.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378797
The quest for a common humanity human dignity and otherness in the religious traditions of the Mediterranean /
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The worldview that all human beings belong to one big family has, in the history of religions, never been taken for granted. Moreover, human rights are a modern notion that should not be projected back onto the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, from the Hellenistic period onwards one encounters the idea of human duties towards not only parents, neighbours and fellow citizens but to all human beings. This volume explores the development of this idea from Antiquity to the present time focussing on the \'other\' as \'neighbour, enemy, and infidel\', on the interpretation of the Biblical story of Abraham´s sacrifice and on ancient and modern ethical and legal implications of the concept of human dignity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004211124
Critical reflections on religion and media in contemporary Bali /
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Scholars of religion have always worked closely with media of one kind or another, from sacred books and archaic languages to cassette-sermons and the Internet. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the ways we actually use these and other media in the pursuit of historical inquiry. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted on the Indonesian island of Bali, this book offers a critique of the media-related assumptions underpinning fields as diverse in their subject matter and approach as the history of religions, British cultural studies and Old Javanese philology. Its central contention is that more nuanced attention to problems of media will have serious implications for how we think about the study of religions, past and present.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047429937 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.