Imagining Religion: From Babylon to JonestownUniversity of Chicago Press, 1982 - 165 Seiten With this influential book of essays, Jonathan Z. Smith has pointed the academic study of religion in a new theoretical direction, one neither theological nor willfully ideological. Making use of examples as apparently diverse and exotic as the Maori cults in nineteenth-century New Zealand and the events of Jonestown, Smith shows that religion must be construed as conventional, anthropological, historical, and as an exercise of imagination. In his analyses, religion emerges as the product of historically and geographically situated human ingenuity, cognition, and curiosity—simply put, as the result of human labor, one of the decisive but wholly ordinary ways human beings create the worlds in which they live and make sense of them. "These seven essays . . . display the critical intelligence, creativity, and sheer common sense that make Smith one of the most methodologically sophisticated and suggestive historians of religion writing today. . . . Smith scrutinizes the fundamental problems of taxonomy and comparison in religious studies, suggestively redescribes such basic categories as canon and ritual, and shows how frequently studied myths may more likely reflect situational incongruities than vaunted mimetic congruities. His final essay, on Jonestown, demonstrates the interpretive power of the historian of religion to render intelligible that in our own day which seems most bizarre."—Richard S. Sarason, Religious Studies Review |
Inhalt
In Comparison a Magic Dwells | 19 |
Toward a Redescription of Canon | 36 |
The Bare Facts of Ritual | 53 |
Myth in History | 66 |
A Pearl of Great Price and a Cargo of Yams | 90 |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Akitu Akitu festival ancient animal Anthropology appears archaic attempt Babylon Babylonian Bear Ceremonialism Berossus Beth She'arim canon cargo cults catalog Christian circumcision classification comparative comparison complex context cosmogony creation culture death deity divination E. B. Tylor early Judaism elements Eliade Enuma elish essay European example exegetical Gudgeon Guyana Hainuwele Hare Hongi Hauhau historian of religion human hunt hunter incongruity individual inscriptions interpretation Jensen Jewish Jews Johansen Jones Jonestown Judaism karakia kill King Movement London Lore Lot-Falck Maori Cosmogony Maori King Maori Wars materials myth of Hainuwele native Neusner Ngati Ngati Maniapoto notion original Pai Marire Pan-Babylonian parallel pattern peace Polynesian Society possible preinterpretative presuppositions Rangi and Papa reference religious ritual sacred scholars students of religion study of religion suggest symbols taxon Taxonomy Temple things translation Tregear uncircumcised walnut Wellington Whatahoro White Night Woman York Zealand
Verweise auf dieses Buch
Schooling as a Ritual Performance: Toward a Political Economy of Educational ... Peter McLaren Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 1999 |
Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and 'the Mystic East' Richard King Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 1999 |