History Of Religions

The history of religions is a human science whose purpose is to study the religions , or rather sets of practices and beliefs, rituals and myths. This discipline makes its official appearance in universities in the second half of the ^nineteenth century , through the development of ideas secular , the debate on the separation of church and state and the rise of social sciences.

Summary 1 Definition 2 History 3 Sources 3.1 Conventional Structures 3.2 Recent Books 3.3 See also External 3.4 Links

/ / Definition

The history of religion addresses the religious phenomena of a non-denominational perspective, from a historical perspective but also anthropological, in time and space. It is in this context, closely connected to other social science disciplines, starting with the ethnology , the philology and history. As these sister disciplines, the history of religions is an observational science-based critical review of data and on the comparison.

This discipline also encounter other names, such as religious studies , which comes from the German Religionswissenschaft, a concept first coined by Friedrich Max Mller , a famous Orientalist, and Indo-European mythologist of the ^nineteenth century. At the time, the study of religion seems to be rooted in the academic romantic. We meet as often as the term of comparative religion, especially in the Anglophone world.

History

The exercise of the history of religions has always been comparative. In the ancient times already, since Herodotus , the Greeks watched with curiosity the customs and traditions of others (Egyptians, Persians, Jews) in order to position themselves. Plutarch , in the ^first century AD, gave us an number of works that might be called comparative mythology. Then let the Fathers of the Church which will compare the different religions (and forge the concept of paganism ) to explain the emergence and the superiority of Christianity. These are also the concepts embodied in this framework by the Fathers of the Church (eg Daylight , or diabolical imitation ) that will serve to explain, upon discovery of the new world of strange customs Indians met there and seem to resemble those of the pagans before Christianity. The comparison will then be played on three levels: the Old, Wild and us. Thus Historia Apologetica the Dominican Bartolom de Las Casas (XVI ^century) and the manners of wild amriquains compared mores of the early days of the Jesuit Joseph Franois Lafitau (XVIII ^century). Then we are still in an apologetic. The history of religions developed there from the look that Christianity is about other religions.

In the nineteenth ^century, after the secularization process started by the philosophers of the Enlightenment , the history of religion will escape this slowly stakes to become a true scientific discipline, freed from the shackles of religion so accurately, better make it his object of study. The history of religions is characterized as primarily theological disciplines, although they also cultivate a profound criticism of their traditions. It will be marked by the Orientalist studies, particularly from the discovery of Sanskrit , Biblical criticism ( Ernest Renan ), but also and especially by the Anglo-Saxon anthropology ( William Robertson Smith , Edward Tylor , James George Frazer ) and French sociological school ( Durkheim , Marcel Mauss , Henri Hubert ).

In the twentieth ^century, the history of religion will still be influenced by cognitive psychology ( Sigmund Freud , Carl Gustav Jung , Karol Krny ), phenomenological ( Rudolf Otto , Mircea Eliade ) or by leading figures of comparative mythology ( Dumzil ) or social anthropology ( Claude Levi-Strauss ).

Today many associations and organizations bring together specialists in different fields of history of religions (see links). Different approaches, from one school to another are still practiced, but the exercise and the comparative historico-anthropological remain the most often practiced.

Sources

• Philippe Borgeaud, The Origins of the history of religions, Paris, 2004.
• Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise, Paris, 1993.

Books classics

• Mller, Karl Otfried , Prolegomena zu einer wissenschafltichen Mythologie, mit einer Zugabe antikritischen, Gttingen, 1825.
• Mller, Friedrich Max , Einleitung in die Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft, Strassburg, 1874
• Smith, William Robertson , The Religion Of The Semites, 1889 (2nd ed. 1894).
• Frazer, James George , The Golden Bough. A Study in Comparative Religion, 2 vols., London / New York 1890 (trad. French: The Golden Bough , 4 vols., Paris, 1981-1984.) cf. Ackerman, R., JG Frazer. His Life and Work, Cambridge UP, 1987.
• Emile Durkheim , The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. The totemic system in Australia, Libraire Felix Alcan, 2nd ed, Paris, 1925 (especially Book I, chap. 1, Book III, chap. 5), (reprint Quadriga, Paris, PUF, 1998).
• Freud, Sigmund , Totem and Taboo, Totem and Taboo. Some correspondences between the mental life of savages and that of neurotics (1912-1913), trans. Weber, Paris, Gallimard, trans. Weber, Paris, Gallimard, 1993.
• Caillois, Roger , The Man and the sacred, Paris, 1939.
• Hubert, Henri and Mauss, Marcel , "Essay on the nature and function of sacrifice," in M. Mauss, Oeuvres, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1968, pp. 195-354.
• Jung, Carl Gustav , Psychology and Religion, Paris, 1958.
• Eliade, Mircea , A Treatise on the history of religions, Paris, 1949.
• Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Paris, 1949.
• Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane, Paris, 1965.
• Levi-Strauss, Claude , Mythological, 4 vols., Paris, Plon, 1964-1971.
• Levi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology, Paris, Plon, 1958.
• Levi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology, Paris, Plon, 1976.
• Puech, Henri-Charles (ed.), History of Religions, Paris, Gallimard, 1970
• Dumezil, George , Myths and epics, 3 vols., Paris, 1968-1973.
• Burkert, Walter , Homo Necans, Berlin, 1972.
• Leroi-Gourhan, Andr , The religions of prehistory, Paris, 1964.
• Meslin, Michel For a science of Religions, 1973

Recent Books

• Boespflug, F., and Dunand, F., (eds.), The comparative history of religions, Research Center of History of Religions, Paris, 1997.
• Yves Bonnefoy (ed.), Dictionnaire des mythologies and religions of traditional societies and the Ancient World, 2 vols., Paris, 1981.
• Philippe Borgeaud, The Origins of the history of religions, Paris, 2004.
• Philippe Borgeaud, Exercises mythology, Geneva, 2005.
• Marcel Detienne, compare the incomparable, Paris, 2000.
• Marcel Detienne, The invention of the mythology, Paris, 1981.
• John R. Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, London, 2005.
• Hans G. Kippenberg, Discovering the History of Religions, Paris, 1999.
• Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth. Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago, Chicago UP, 1999.
• Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, Chicago, 2005.
• Russell T. McCutcheon, Critics Not Caretakers, New York, 2001.
• Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise, Paris, 1993.
• Robert A. Segal (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, Malden, 2006.
• Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion, Chicago, 2004.
• Ivan Strenski, Thinking about Religion. A Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion, Malden, 2006.
• Guy G. Stroumsa Barbarian Philosophy. The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity, Tbingen, 1999.
• Mark C. Taylor, Critical Terms for Religious Studies, Chicago, 1998.
• Charles Vander Linden, An Essay on Good and Evil in Jewish and Christian traditions , Nogent King, 2007.

See also

• Journal of the History of Religions
• Archives of social science of religion
• International Association for the History of Religions
• The group Bussire

External Links