The Question of Methodological Naturalism.
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The traditions and institutions that we call religions abound with references to the supernatural: ancestral spirits, karma, the afterlife, miracles, revelation, deities, et cetera How are students of religion to approach the behaviors, doctrines, and beliefs that refer to such phenomena, which by their very nature are supposed to defy the methods of empirical research and the theories of historical scholarship? That is the question of methodological naturalism. The Question of Methodological Naturalism offers ten thoughtful engagements with that perennial question for the academic study of religion. Contributors include established senior scholars and newer voices propounding a range of perspectives, resulting in both surprising points of convergence and irreconcilable differences in how our shared discipline should be conceptualized and practiced.
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1 online resource. :
9789004372436
Exercices d'histoire des religions : comparaison, rites, mythes, et emotions /
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Exercices d'histoire des religions is a collection of the most important articles published by Philippe Borgeaud during his career as the professor of history of religions at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). These nineteen studies showcase the many reflections of the Swiss scholar of religion on the categories and tools used to describe and compare such evanescent concepts as "religions", "myths" and "rituals", and his methodology for a critical and comparative study of ancient and modern religions. Through them, readers will gain a clear understanding of the importance such an approach can wield in the contemporary discussions and dissents about religions. Exercices d'histoire des religions rassemble les articles les plus importants publiés par Philippe Borgeaud durant sa carrière en tant que professeur d'histoire des religions à l'Université de Genève. Ces dix-neuf enquêtes illustrent les réflexions du savant suisse sur les outils et catégories utilisés par l'historien des religions pour décrire et comparer des concepts aussi évanescents que les « religions », les « mythes » ou les « rituels », et sur le rôle joué par les émotions dans leur élaboration. À travers eux, le lecteur est amené à découvrir la méthode développée par Philippe Borgeaud pour étudier de manière critique et comparative les religions antiques et modernes, une approche sans doute fondamentale pour mieux saisir les discussions et controverses contemporaines sur ce sujet.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004319141 :
1570-078X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Myths, martyrs, and modernity : studies in the history of religions in honour of Jan N. Bremmer /
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This volume in honour of Jan N. Bremmer contains the contributions of numerous students, colleagues, and friends offered to him on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Throughout his career, Bremmer has distinguished himself as an internationally renowned scholar of religion both past and present, including first and foremost Greek and Roman religion, but also early Christianity and post-classical developments in religion and spirituality. In line with these three main areas of Bremmer's research, the volume is divided into three parts, bringing together contributions from distinguished scholars in many fields. The result is a diverse book which provides a broad spectrum of original ideas and innovative approaches in the history of religions, thus reflecting the nature of the scholarship of Bremmer himself.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004193659 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
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.
Diversity in the structure of Christian reasoning : interpretation, disagreement, and world Christianity /
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Diversity in the Structure of Christian Reasoning examines the effect of Christian commitments on rationality. When Christians read scripture, traditions supply concepts that shape what counts as normal, good, and true. This book offers an account of how different communities produce divergent readings of the Bible. It considers two examples from World Christianity, first a Bakongo community in central Africa, and then a Tamil bishop in southern India. Each case displays a relation between tradition and reason that reconfigures the hermeneutical picture developed by Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. To see what transpires when readers decide about a correct interpretation, this book offers theologians and scholars of religion a fresh strategy that keeps in view the global character of modern Christianity.
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1 online resource (x, 242 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004298057 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religions and education in antiquity : studies in honour of Michel Desjardins /
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Religions and Education in Antiquity gathers ten essays on teaching and learning in the contexts of ancient Western religions, including Judaism, early Christianity and Gnostic Christian traditions. Beginning with an overview of religious education in the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds, editor Alex Damm and the contributors together demonstrate the mutual influence of religion and education on each other; the relevance of educational traditions in addressing (for instance) historical or exegetical issues; and the thoroughgoing importance of education to religious life across time and space in antiquity. Highly useful to scholars of religion, theology, classics and education, this volume affords a state of the art study on pedagogy and learning in ancient religious contexts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004384613 :
0169-8834 ;
The concept of religion : defining and measuring contemporary beliefs and practices /
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In The Concept of Religion Hans Schilderman edits a volume on the definition and empirical study of religion within the changing landscape of modern society. Now that we can no longer assume a simple harmony between the scientific concept of religion, church doctrine and practiced belief, issues concerning the definition and measurement of religion are becoming crucial issues to academic institutions. The contributing authors present empirical studies studying issues of lifespan and socialisation at school settings; of vocation and profession at church and hospital settings; and culture and nation of society at large. The volume offers a beautiful sample of the empirical study of religion; a conceptual and illustrative overview of the academic field for students and scholars in religion.
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1 online resource (198 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004299320 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Study of Religion in Southern Africa, Essays in Honour of G.C. Oosthuizen.
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This collection of essays is brought together in the honour of Gerhardus Cornelis (Pippin) Oosthuizen on his eighty third birthday. Pippin has been one of the most significant religion researchers and prolific Humanities publishers South Africa has ever produced. Among his friends and colleagues are some of the most important scholars of religion in South Africa and elsewhere. With his critical acumen and insightful understanding of the ebb and flow of the South African socio-political landscape of the last fifty-odd years, he has been a distinguished leader in research and has been honoured with Honorary doctorates from South Africa's leading universities. This collection constitutes a small token of appreciation for his more than fifty years in academia and his academic leadership.
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1 online resource. :
9789047407492
Global Christianity : contested claims /
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In 2002 Philip Jenkins wrote The Next Christendom . Over the past half century the centre of gravity of the Christian world has moved decisively to the global South, says Jenkins. Within a few decades European and Euro-American Christians will have become a small fragment of world Christianity. By that time Christianity in Europe and North America will to a large extent consist of Southern-derived immigrant communities. Southern churches will fulfil neither the Liberation Dream nor the Conservative Dream of the North, but will seek their own solutions to their particular problems. Jenkins' book evoked strong reactions, a bit to his own surprise, as the book contained little new. In the United States of America, the prospect of a more biblical Christianity caused reactions of alarm in liberal circles. In contrast, conservatives were delighted by the same prospect. In Europe the book landed in the middle of the debate on Europe as an exceptional case. It was detested by those who stick to the theory of ongoing and irreversible secularisation and welcomed by those who see a resurgence of religion, also in Europe. In the present volume, scholars of religion and theologians assess the global trends in World Christianity as described in Philip Jenkins' book. It is the outcome of an international conference on Southern Christianity and its relation to Christianity in the North, held in the Conference Centre of Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
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"It is the outcome of an international conference on southern Christianity and its relation to Christianity in the north, held in the conference centre of Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands."--Page 4 of cover. :
1 online resource (231 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401204323 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Kabbalah and modernity : interpretations, transformations, adaptations /
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The persistence of kabbalistic groups in the twentieth century has largely been ignored or underestimated by scholars of religion. Only recently have scholars began to turn their attention to the many-facetted roles that kabbalistic doctrines and schools have played in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture. Often, and necessarily, this new interest and openness went along with a contextualization and re-valuation of earlier scholarly approaches to kabbalah. This volume brings together leading representatives of this ongoing debate in order to break new ground for a better understanding and conceptualization of the role of kabbalah in modern religious, intellectual, and political discourse.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004182875 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The novel in the ancient world /
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This is the second publication in Brill's handbook series The Classical Tradition . The subject of this volume is that group of works of extended prose narrative fiction which bears many similarities to the modern novel and which appeared in the later classical periods in Greece and Rome. The ancient novel has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent years not only among students of literature, but also among those looking for new sources on the popular culture of antiquity and among scholars of religion. The volume surveys the new insights and approaches to the ancient novel which have emerged form the application of a variety of disciplines in the recent years. The 25 senior scholars contributing to the volume are drawn from a broad range of European and North American traditions of scholarship. Chapters cover the important issues dealing with the novel, novelists, novel-like works of fiction, their development, transformation, Christianisation and Nachleben, as well as a broad range of matters, from literary/philological to cultural/historical and religious, which concerns modern scholars in the field. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
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1 online resource (x, 876 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 815-864) and index. :
9789004217638 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Moltmann and China : Theological Encounters from Hong Kong to Beijing /
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In this volume, Lam and Thurston present a series of important theological debates between Jürgen Moltmann, the contemporary German Reformed theologian, and humanities scholars based in Chinese metropolises from Hong Kong to Beijing between 2014 and 2018. Featured, along with original essays and newly edited contributions by Moltmann, are the voices of such renowned Chinese scholars of religion as He Guanghu, Lai Pan-chiu, Zhuo Xinping and the contemporary comparativist Yang Huilin. These debates matter because they shed light on themes rarely explored in cross-cultural theological dialogue as it unfolds, showcasing the ongoing relevance of theological critique in and with the contemporary humanities. Contributors to the volume are: Hong Liang, Kwok Wai-luen, Lai Pan-chiu, Jason Lam, Jürgen Moltmann, Naomi Thurston, Yang Huaming, Yang Huilin.
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1 online resource (256 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004543348
Naming and thinking God in Europe today : theology in global dialogue /
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Is there a new need and place for God-talk in Europe? The present volume both confirms this and opens up new questions for discussion. It shows how different traditions of naming and thinking God in Europe draw on various theoretical and philosophical foundations that are in competition with one another in many ways. Due to socio-cultural, historical and political divides between Eastern and Western Europe, these theological traditions often suffer from isolation and mutual misunderstanding. Can the inherent tensions and conflicts be understood more adequately? While exploring a variety of approaches in Europe on the topic, several authors also ask: How can God be named and thought in Europe, which finds itself in the midst of complex crosscultural and interreligious processes - particularly as immigration increases and peoples of non-Christian faith traditions name and think God in ways that differ from and sometimes conflict with Europe's dominant religion(s) and secular culture? What function and impact will traditional God-talk have in a globalizing Europe as religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism move into the foreground? This volume not only reveals the broad spectrum of its topic but also documents the vivid seeking undertaken by a new generation of European theologians and scholars of religion who openly engage the question of how to live and believe in Europe today, facing complex global challenges.
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"This volume is the first publication of a three-year-long European Socrates Intensive program entitled "The concept of God in Europe's global religious dialogue," compare pages [11]. The program comprised three conference seminars that met in 2003, 2004, and 2005. The papers in this volume were presented at the meeting held in May, 2003, in Vienna. :
1 online resource (536 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004358225 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.