Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten

Funerary rituals and the cult of the dead are classics of research in religious studies, especially for ancient Egypt. Still, we know relatively little about how people interacted in daily life at the city of Memphis and its Saqqara necropolis in the late second millennium BCE. By focussing on lived ancient religion, we can see that the social and religious strategies employed by the individuals at Saqqara are not just means on the way to religious, post-mortem salvation, nor is their self-representation simply intended to manifest social status. On the contrary, the religious practices at Saqqara show in their complex spatiality a wide spectrum of options to configure sociality before and after one's own death. The analytical distinction between religion and other forms of human practices and sociality illuminates the range of cultural practices and how people selected, modified, or even avoided certain religious practices. As a result, pre-funerary, funerary and practices of the subsequent mortuary cults, in close connection with religious practices directed towards other ancestors and deities, allow the formation of imagined and functioning reminiscence clusters as central social groups at Saqqara, creating a heuristic model applicable also to other contexts.

The oriental turn of theosophy has long been seen as the entry of Eastern knowledge into Western spiritualism. This view does not go far enough, however. The ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism are related to spiritualism, Christianity, and science. Theosophical teachings grew out of a globalizing world of colonial power and the newest contemporary insights on nature and religion.

Urban Religion is an emerging research field cutting across various social science disciplines, all of them dealing with “lived religion” in contemporary and (mainly) global cities. It describes the reciprocal formation and mutual influence of religion and urbanity in both their material and ideational dimensions. However, this approach, if duly historicized, can be also fruitfully applied to antiquity.

Aim of the volume is the analysis of the entanglement of religious communication and city life during an arc of time that is characterised by dramatic and even contradicting developments. Bringing together textual analyses and archaelogical case studies in a comparative perspective, the volume zooms in on the historical context of the advanced imperial and late antique Mediterranean space (2nd–8th centuries CE).

Over the past 30 years, several studies have attempted to classify ancient Jewish and Christian groups in the world of contemporary associations. There still are major fundamental objections raised to their findings. Often, unreflective premises end up in conflict. This book presents the debate and tries to clarify the question of what can be explained through historical comparison and what cannot.

This study offers basic insights into the diversity of prayer in ancient Rome. It examines such diversity as an expression of lived religion, thereby countering common philological and historical approaches (e.g. civic religion). Lived religion elevates the acting individual as the point of departure for analysis, and accordingly, characterizes Roman prayer as the expression of creative practice and religious experience.

Recent research on the religious history of the Roman imperial period has clearly shown that the notion of "Roman paganism" having been transformed by "Eastern religions" was a mistaken one. The positive value of this critique is less clear, however. The studies in this volume reexamine the parallels between the evolution of Empire and religion in the pre-Christian Imperium Romanum from various perspectives.

The elaborate consumption of resources to bury the dead has a long tradition in Chinese burial culture. Yet criticism of expensive burial practices has an equally long tradition. This book illuminates continuity and change in burial practices as well as the criticism thereof, analyzing them against the backdrop of Chinese religious politics and theory formation in religious studies.

This study explores religious transformation in Iran under Safavid rule. In addition to presenting the 1501 proclamation of Shia Islam as the official religion, it places the Safavids in context, examines religious change as such, and traces the multiple actors involved. It also considers impacts to religious institutions and the legitimation of rule, while reflecting on religious change in architecture and ritual performances.

This study radically reformulates the importance of socialist trends in European religious history. By examining the emergence of the radical socialist Alphonse-Louis Constant (1810–1875), who is regarded as the founder of occultism under the name Eliphas Lévi, it reveals the religious character of socialism during the July monarchy and its surprising persistence in new religious movements after 1848.

History is one of the most important cultural tools to make sense of one’s situation, to establish identity, define otherness, and explain change. This is the first systematic scholarly study that analyses the complex relationship between history and religion, taking into account religious groups both as producers of historical narratives as well as distinct topics of historiography. Coming from different disciplines, the authors of this volume ask under which conditions and with what consequences religions are historicised. How do religious groups employ historical narratives in the construction of their identities? What are the biases and elisions of current analytical and descriptive frames in the History of Religion? The volume aims at initiating a comparative historiography of religion and combines disciplinary competences of Religious Studies and the History of Religion, Confessional Theologies, History, History of Science, and Literary Studies. By applying literary comparison and historical contextualization to those texts that have been used as central documents for histories of individual religions, their historiographic themes, tools and strategies are analysed. The comparative approach addresses circum-Mediterranean and European as well as Asian religious traditions from the first millennium BCE to the present and deals with topics such as the origins of religious historiography, the practices of writing and the transformation of narratives.

The last decade has seen a surge of scholarly interest in these religious professionals and a good number of high quality publications. Our volume, however, with its unique intercultural character and its explicit focus on appropriation and contestation of religious expertise in the Imperial Era is substantially different.

Unlike the rather narrow focus of earlier studies of civic priests, the papers presented here examine a wider range of religious professionals, their dynamic interaction with established religious authorities and institutions, and their contributions to religious innovation in the ancient Mediterranean world, from the late Hellenistic period through to Late Antiquity, from the City of Rome to mainland Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, from Greek civic practice to ancient Judaism.

A further advantage of our volume is the wide range of media of transmission taken into account. Our contributors look at both old and new materials, which derive not only from literary sources but also from papyri, inscriptions, and material culture. Above all, this volume assesses critically convenient terminological usage and offers a unique insight into a rich gamut of ancient Mediterranean religious specialists.

The public/private distinction is fundamental to modern theories of the family, religion and religious freedom, and state power, yet it has had different salience, and been understood differently, from place to place and time to time. The volume brings together essays from an international array of experts in law and religion, in order to examine the public/private distinction in comparative perspective. The essays focus on the cultures and religions of the ancient Mediterranean, in the formative periods of Greece and Rome and the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Particular attention is given to the private exercise of religion, the relation between public norms and private life, and the division between public and private space and the place of religion therein.

Cultural records such as dedications, honorific statues and decrees are keys to understanding the manifold and diverse social roles and religious functions of priesthoods in the cities of Asia Minor and the Aegean islands from the classical period to late antiquity. These texts and images indicate how the priests and priestesses saw themselves and were viewed by others.
The approaches in this volume are historical, religious, and archaeological, and they elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and the perception of priests and priestesses as citizens of the polis. The volume focuses on developments from the Hellenistic period into Imperial times. Subjects include: gendered priesthoods and family traditions, the topography of honorary statues and the presentation of funerary monuments, federal and civic priesthoods as well as priests of private cult-foundations, benefactions and social pressure, and the religious, social and political functions of priests and priestesses within cities.

Until now, scholars have largely ignored Apollonius of Rhodes’s deep interest in secret cults, arcane rituals, paradoxa, and magic. The present study extensively explores this material with special emphasis on its function in the Argonautica. Based on this complementary methodological presentation, the book is geared to both religious historians and literary scholars.

This volume will concentrate its search for religious individuality on texts and practices related to texts from Classical Greece to Late Antiquity. Texts offer opportunities to express one’s own religious experience and shape one’s own religious personality within the boundaries of what is acceptable. Inscriptions in public or at least easily accessible spaces might substantially differ in there range of expressions and topics from letters within a sectarian religious group (which, at the same time, might put enormous pressure on conformity among its members, regarded as deviant by a majority of contemporaries). Furthermore, texts might offer and advocate new practices in reading, meditating, remembering or repeating these very texts. Such practices might contribute to the development of religious individuality, experienced or expressed in factual isolation, responsibility, competition, and finally in philosophical or theological reflections about “personhood” or “self”. The volume develops its topic in three sections, addressing personhood, representative and charismatic individuality, the interaction of individual and groups and practices of reading and writing. It explores Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin texts.

Ever since Vlastos’ “Theology and Philosophy in Early Greek Thought,” scholars have known that a consideration of ancient philosophy without attention to its theological, cosmological and soteriological dimensions remains onesided. Yet, philosophers continue to discuss thinkers such as Parmenides and Plato without knowledge of their debt to the archaic religious traditions. Perhaps our own religious prejudices allow us to see only a “polis religion” in Greek religion, while our modern philosophical openness and emphasis on reason induce us to rehabilitate ancient philosophy by what we consider the highest standard of knowledge: proper argumentation. Yet, it is possible to see ancient philosophy as operating according to a different system of meaning, a different “logic.” Such a different sense of logic operates in myth and other narratives, where the argument is neither completely illogical nor rational in the positivist sense. The articles in this volume undertake a critical engagement with this unspoken legacy of Greek religion. The aim of the volume as a whole is to show how, beyond the formalities and fallacies of arguments, something more profound is at stake in ancient philosophy: the salvation of the philosopher-initiate.

Images and inscriptions on monuments can show us how priests and cult personnel saw themselves and were viewed by others, illuminating the social and political identity of these figures within their polis. Dedications and donations by cult personnel, and the honours that they earned, demonstrate their claim on the city’s attention and their financial power. The cityscape itself came to be shaped, in varying intensities and forms, by statues in honour of cult personnel, set up by relatives, fellow citizens and other groups. This set of cultural records, analysed in the studies presented here, is central to understanding how the roles of priests and priestesses were constructed in social and political terms in post-classical Athens. The approaches are both historical and archaeological, and elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and their perception, by themselves and by others, as citizens of the polis.

This book (the author’s revised dissertation) analyzes the history of the concept of magic spanning about 2,500 years. Following an introduction discussing the problem of academic definitions of magic in general, the book presents the comprehensive history of the concept of magic for the first time, from its origins in antiquity to the 20th century. Polemic texts with an external perspective are included in equal measure along with authors that described and understood themselves as “magicians” in Western cultural history.

In Catholicism, ‘Marian apparitions’ such as those at Lourdes belong to the most spectacular cases of religious mass phenomenon. A prominent case occurred in 1983 in Peñablanca, Chile. During the first difficult crisis year of the Pinochet dictatorship, a seventeen-year-old youth reported an apparition near Valparaíso. Through dedicated supporters, pilgrimages and press reports, it soon developed into both a mass phenomenon and a media phenomenon. The case became particularly controversial following accusations that the military government had become involved in the events with manipulative intensions.

Why is Christianity so stubborn in its rejection of same-sex sexuality? The Bible does not give an unequivocal answer to this question. The key to the explanation is to be found rather in the apocryphal and Jewish-Hellenistic writings surrounding the New Testament. In an anamnesis of the history of Judaism and Christianity inspired by Queer Theory, the author interprets the condemnation of same-sex sexuality as a symptom of a fundamental disease in Christianity. This takes up a central position in the imagery of the system of Christian symbolism - without Sodom there would be no Gospel.

Plutarch, as a writer, Platonic philosopher and Delphic priest presents a singular combination of theology, philosophy and various traditions of living religion (mystery religions, Egyptian religion, Zoroastrism). The twelve contributions by leading Plutarch scholars from the fields of philosophy, classical studies, religious studies and theology illuminate the relationship in Plutarch’s thought of the one Divinity to the many gods of the Greek Pantheon – and also to other religions.

The financing and maintenance of cults, the administration of sacred places, and ways of expressing religiosity are important aspects for understanding the organisation of human communities in ancient times. Among other things, the study examines the amount of land held by sacred places, the agricultural use made of the land, possible sources of income from leasing out the land, regulations for protecting the 'sacred land', together with a possible change in religiosity when dealing with the property of the gods (7th - 4th cents. BC).

Colleagues and friends have compiled this volume to honor Hans G. Kippenberg and engage in a critical and creative dialogue with his ideas. The 32 essays in German and English language are concerned with issues that have been part of Hans G. Kippenberg's work in recent years: History of the Academic Study of Religions · Methodological Reflections · European History of Religions · Religion and Modernity · Religion and Violence · Religion and Law.

This study, a contribution from the history of science, explores the theory that the classical philologist Hermann Usener (1834 - 1905) proposed in 1896 about the origin of religion and inquires into the theory's reception in the works of Albrecht Dieterich, Ludwig Radermacher, Aby Warburg and Walter F. Otto. Rooted in structural analysis, Usener's doctrine of religious concept formation reopened the decades-old debate and inspired others to take up his project and continue it with a critical frame of mind.

With the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, New England history began as a Puritan foundational experiment within the wilderness. The stirring history of North America’s beginnings in the politics of religion are reconstructed here by means of personal testimonies.

Studies in the adaptation of astrological discourses in Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity.

From the contents:
Astrology and priestly theology in Qumran. Astrology in light of Jewish historiography. Evidence of astrology in the literature "between the Testaments." The rabbinic discourse. Astrology in the Christian canon. Astrology in the context of Gnosticism. Manichaean astrology. Anti-astrological discourses in centrist Christianity.

Modern slogans such as "Globalization", "Clash of cultures" or "Religious pluralism" are closely linked to the history of intercultural and interreligious encounters over previous centuries. With its account of the history and course of the World's Parliament of Religions, the first interreligious conference at international level, held in Chicago in 1893, the study shows how different religions and cultures can benefit from engaging with each other in a positive manner. Followers of the most disparate Western and Asian traditions met in Chicago to present their views and to seek dialogue. The analysis of their presentations reveals the typical 19th century structures of interreligious perception and engagement. These are still to be found as "Answers of the modern" in the dialogue between religions today, and provide a historical background to understanding the processes of mutual engagement and exchange. An appendix provides brief details of the members of the Parliament.

This historically and empirically based study presents the rise and significance of the divine monkey chief Hanuman, who still enjoys popularity in India today. The first accounts of the Hanuman figure are to be found in the national epic the Ramayana (approx. 300 BC–200 AD), but the veneration of it has only grown considerably over the last few centuries.

The account opens with a description of a three-day consecration ritual for a Hanuman cultic figure in Benares and then proceeds to unfold the historical development of the divine figure and its veneration from its beginnings up to the present day. A concluding empirical study illuminates the image of the divine figure and the motivations of present-day Hanuman worshippers. The volume contains illustrations and an appendix which includes a list of some 200 Hanuman temples and shrines together with selected interviews.

The author examines a group of myths and festivals in ancient Greek religion in which the motifs of the exchange of gender roles and sexual transformation play a central role. The application of present-day theories from the realm of religious studies, and of the results of gender studies, leads to a new and differentiated picture of the entire complex in the historical context of Greek polis religion in the archaic and classical period.

Kalender und Öffentlichkeit - Jörg Rüpke

This title from the De Gruyter Book Archive has been digitized in order to make it available for academic research. It was originally published under National Socialism and has to be viewed in this historical context. Learn more here.

This title from the De Gruyter Book Archive has been digitized in order to make it available for academic research. It was originally published under National Socialism and has to be viewed in this historical context. Learn more here.

For over 400 years, the Sasanian Empire was one of late antiquity’s most powerful empires. Zoroastrian religious specialists came up with a system to order its complex society. By looking at numerous primary sources, this volume reconstructs that process in the context of Sasanian social and economic history and examines its afterlife in Zoroastrian texts.

This monograph studies the professionalization of History of religions as an academic discipline in late 19th and early 20th century France and Europe. Its common thread is the work of the French Modernist priest and later Professor of History of religions at the Collège de France, Alfred Loisy (1857-1940), who participated in many of the most topical debates among French and international historians of religions.

Unlike his well-studied Modernist theology, Loisy’s writings on comparative religion, and his rich interactions with famous scholars like F. Cumont, M. Mauss, or J.G. Frazer, remain largely unknown. This monograph is the first to paint a comprehensive picture of his career as a historian of religions before and after his excommunication in 1908.

Through a contextual analysis of publications by Loisy and contemporaries, and a large corpus of private correspondence, it illuminates the scientification of the discipline between 1890-1920, and its deep entanglement with religion, politics, and society. Particular attention is also given to the role of national and transnational scholarly networks, and the way they controlled the theoretical and institutional frameworks for studying the history of religions.