History and the study of religion
Stanley Stowers
Bok Engelsk 2024 Stanley Kent Stowers
| Omfang | bindumes cm
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| Opplysninger | "How does one understand religion? Can one explain religion? How does one understand the craft and discipline of the historian? How can one best bring together the study of religion with the craft and discipline of the historian? I am a historian who works in the study of religion and believe that the present intellectual moment offers enormous in some ways unprecedented opportunities both in the study of religion and historiography. But at the same time, difficulties and dangers loom together with the opportunities. My specialty and prime set of examples lie in the study of ancient Mediterranean religion, if indeed there is something that can rightly be called Mediterranean religion or even called religion. Many specialists in the study of religion and also many of those who study ancient cultures doubt, or even reject outright, religion as a cross historical category, on the one hand, and on the other, anything common about religion across the ancient Mediterranean. And some cognitive scientists who against religion specialists have argued for the centrality of gods to religion, then agree with the skeptics that religion is not a coherent social object, a social kind. I will argue that long discredited forms of anti-realism and untenable anthropocentrism haunt both groups. Among other areas, I work in Christianity and Judaism. Do they belong to Mediterranean religion? One can easily see how coming to an understanding of what religion is and what Mediterranean religion is form key questions. I will argue that religion is a robust realistic entity, a social kind, and that ancient Mediterranean religion even with all of its great diversity operated with some key common principles. It is no secret that Christianity and Judaism have presented themselves as unique and essentially untouched by an inferior and degenerate religiosity that characterized everyone else in the Mediterranean. History looks different when one dispenses with such normatively heavy freight and situates the two within rather than outside of Mediterranean religion"--
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| ISBN | 9780197775677
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