Comparative History of Religions

Personne n'a jamais "décidé" officiellement de transformer le dieu Pan en Satan, et il n'existe ni date précise, ni décret religieux, ni auteur unique. Il s'agit d'un processus lent, théologique et culturel, principalement lié à l'essor du christianisme entre l'Antiquité tardive et le haut Moyen Âge.

An accurate understanding of Catholic views of the body and theological traditions in the medieval and early modern periods allows us to see the ways Catholic theological sensibilities positively shaped sport practices during these periods and continued to exercise an influence later in the United States. Thomas Aquinas played an important role in this regard. In his view, since virtue had to do with moderation, a virtuous person should not work all the time, but needed time for play and recreation. Thomas' thought on this topic influenced late medieval preaching, the humanist and Jesuit schools of the Renaissance, the approach of Jesuit missionaries to Native American games, and the development of sports at Catholic schools in the nineteenth-century United States. Catholic acceptance of sport in the United States, then, was based on theological and ethical considerations and predates its embrace by secularists and "muscular" Protestant Christians in the late nineteenth century.

Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) is a key figure for the history of Christianity and the history of exegesis. While his involvement in the so-called “Modernist crisis” and his role as a Biblical scholar have been the subject of several publications, his role in the history of religions and in the historical development of religious comparativism is far less investigated. A recent
monograph by Annelies Lannoy (Alfred Loisy and the Making of History of Religions, 2020) is now helping to fill this scholarly lacuna. In the present article, I will offer some considerations on Lannoy’s book, taking it as a starting point to develop some additional thoughts on the theoretical and methodological connections that Loisy has with John Henry Newman and
with Ernst Troeltsch. In particular, I will address Troeltsch’s “relativization” of Christianity and its relation to religious comparativism. I will also recall the pivotal debate between Loisy and Harnack.

Depuis le XIXe siècle, l'étude des mythoi (μῦθοι) gréco-romains a dépassé les frontières de la littérature pour s'imposer comme un objet interdisciplinaire majeur, mobilisant philologie, histoire des religions, anthropologie et surtout archéologie classique (archaiología, ἀρχαιολογία, « discours sur les choses anciennes »). Cette approche pluridisciplinaire vise à approfondir la compréhension des récits mythiques, en interrogeant leur possible ancrage matériel à travers des vestiges archéologiques-qu'ils soient lieux, monuments, objets ou pratiques rituelles. Toutefois, peut-on réellement faire coïncider vérité archéologique et vérité mythique ? Le transfert du mythe, narré par tradition orale ou textes littéraires, dans un cadre strictement factuel, soulève d'importantes questions méthodologiques, épistémologiques et herméneutiques. Ce texte propose d'éclairer ces enjeux en examinant successivement : la tentative de validation historique archéologique (exemple de Troie), la contextualisation des récits fondateurs (le Palatin et Rome), et les dérives possibles d'une archéologie « confirmatoire » à travers une critique des usages idéologiques.

Çalışma, Kur’ân’ın Ehl-i kitabın inanç ve uygulamalarına yönelik tashih edici rolünü, özellikle namazda rükû örneği üzerinden ortaya koymayı hedeflemiştir. Çalışmada betimsel, tarihsel ve karşılaştırmalı yöntemler kullanılmaktadır. Çalışmanın temel kaynakları İslam ve Yahudiliğin kutsal kitapları etrafında şekillenmiş tefsir ve tarih yazınıdır. Günümüzde Karaî ve Sâmirî gruplar dışında Yahudilerin çoğunu oluşturan Rabbâni Yahudiler ibadetlerinde rükȗ ve secde etmemektedirler. Kur’ân vahiy geleneklerindeki ibadet rükünlerine atıfta bulunmaktadır. Çalışmada Yahudilerin erken tarihî süreçlerine ait ayakta, eğilerek, yere kapanarak ve diz üstü çökerek yapılan bedenli dua formları Tanah’ın incelenmesiyle ortaya koyulmaktadır. Ayrıca Rabbânî Yahudiliğin ikinci temel kaynağı Talmud’da günlük ibadette rükû formu tespit edilmektedir. Tefsirlere göre Kur’ân’ın “rükû edenlerle birlikte rükû edin.” hitabı dönemin Yahudilerine yöneliktir. Kur’ân aynı ilahi hitabın Hz. Meryem’e yapıldığını da bildirir. Bu hitaplarla Yahudilerin ibadetleri arasındaki ilişkinin ortaya konulabilmesi için ayetlerin arka planı ve nüzul sebepleri tarih ve tefsir rivayetleri ile tespit edilmektedir.

L’archétype, conçu comme un noyau matriciel et transformateur, explique comment le mythe de Pandore comporte trois identités qu’il a consolidées depuis la période décadente. Ses réécritures sont plurivoques dans la culture européenne, et quelle que soit la méfiance que l’on ait à l’égard de ce récit mythique, le modèle aussi cosmogonique qu’eschatologique dégagé a le mérite de se tourner vers une lecture écocritique et « mythodologique » de la première femme.

« Attablé avec son sombrero estival, non loin du catalpa, le temps d'un échange, étonnement vivant, là. Son ancien lui semblait sourdre de l'homme retiré du monde, réputé misanthrope, coupé des affaires courantes. J'avais le sentiment d'une visite. » Cet incipit, peu commun pour la biographie intellectuelle d'un savant spécialiste de la Grèce ancienne, donne le ton et dit déjà beaucoup. Première image de la rencontre de l'auteur, jeune historien postdoctorant à l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE) où il s'occupe d'affaires de laïcité, avec le vieux philologue, helléniste et anthropologue comparatiste de renommée mondiale. Si nos interlocuteurs ne partagent pas vraiment le même objet d'étude, de nombreux points communs les relient : leur ville natale de Liège, le tropisme intellectuel parisien, le sentiment minoritaire, l'EPHE, une conception non académique de la recherche. Dans les dernières pages du livre, postface en manière de making of, l'auteur précise que le parcours de savant qu'on vient de lire n'est pas une « biographie scientifique » mais plutôt un « essai subjectif », « sur un intellectuel public de notoriété secondaire » mais qui n'en est pas moins un « reflet » direct de la « première ligne » (Lévi-Strauss, Barthes). Intitulé « équinoxe »-et sans doute d'automne de la vie : Detienne (1935-2019) décédera six mois après l'entretienle prologue ne cache pas la fascination de l'auteur pour l'intelligence pétillante et la gestuelle encore vive de celui qui « faisait de Dionysos, d'Apollon et des chants orphiques une question d'actualité » (p. 12). L'auteur ne tait pas non plus ses doutes sur les « moyens de son attraction » dès lors qu'il n'a entendu prononcer le nom de son sujet qu'un an avant de le rencontrer. Autant dire tout de suite qu'avec cet essai à l'écriture allègre et au contenu fort documenté, Vincent Genin a mis les bouchées

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La Généalogie et la fin des Huguenaux a été publiée durant l’automne 1572 par Gabriel de Saconay, chanoine-comte de la ville de Lyon. Cet ouvrage pamphlétaire enjoint le roi à ne pas s’adoucir face aux réformés, accusés de comploter contre la monarchie depuis la conjuration d’Amboise (1560). Cette admonestation inquiète ne prête guère au rire. Pourtant, le titre affiche un jeu de mots, lui-même annonciateur d’une comparaison entre les huguenots et des « guenaux », ou « guenons ». Parmi les images zoologiques que l’on rencontre dans la satire religieuse, l’image du singe se distingue par sa singulière polyvalence. Elle se développe dans cet ouvrage suivant une orientation avant tout agressive. Mais le texte suit également une logique de caricature, qui se manifeste par des figurations comiques, des jeux de mots, des échos aux adages érasmiens, et se prolonge dans trois images gravées. Cette insertion du rire en territoire hostile incite à examiner son statut dans cet ouvrage. On s’in...

Desde la Asociación de Jóvenes Investigadores en Ciencias de las Religiones, nos complace anunciar la celebración del III Encuentro, con carácter internacional, que tendrá lugar de forma semipresencial los días 13, 14 y 15 de octubre de 2021 en el Salón de Actos de la Facultad de Filología (Edificio D) de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

En el Encuentro, siguiendo con la trayectoria de los años anteriores, se aceptarán propuestas de una amplia variedad de disciplinas científicas para fomentar un diálogo no solo multidisciplinar, sino también interdisciplinar y transversal. La creación de sinergias constituye un aspecto fundamental para la comprensión de las realidades tan poliédricas que constituyen las diferentes religiones, tanto pasadas como presentes. Diferentes miradas que surgen desde la iconografía e iconología, los estudios históricos o la literatura, pasando por la Antropología, los estudios culturales o la Filosofía. Pero también desde la materialidad de las religiones, sus paisajes sonoros, los enfoques políticos o la Historia del Arte. Todas ellas son teselas imprescindibles para la formación de ese mosaico que es el estudio de las religiones. El propósito último de nuestros coloquios reside en ofrecer un espacio científico de debate sobre determinados aspectos del fenómeno religioso que no siempre son objeto de investigación en los estudios estandarizados de Ciencias de las Religiones.

Los interesados en presentar propuestas inéditas deberán cumplimentar el formulario y remitirlo vía email a esta dirección de correo electrónico
([email protected]). La fecha límite de presentación de inscripciones es hasta el 20 de julio de 2021. Las propuestas remitidas se someterán a un proceso de revisión y selección por el Comité Científico en el que se valorará equitativamente la calidad y originalidad de las mismas en aras del rigor científico. Se aceptarán intervenciones en los siguientes idiomas: castellano, inglés, italiano y francés.

Las comunicaciones deberán adscribirse a una de las mesas temáticas configuradas. A saber:
A. Género y religiones
B. Magia y religiones
C. Iconografía e iconología del hecho religioso
D. Música, silencio y sonoridad en las religiones
E. Teologías políticas
F. Literatura y religiones
G. Diálogo Interreligioso e Intercultural
H. Filosofía, Sociología y Antropología de las religiones
I. Materialidad y religiones

The article is devoted to study the Medieval stages of spread of Islam in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia according to the historical sources. The authors from the Kyrgyz State University (nowadays the Kyrgyz National University named after Jusup Balasagyn, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) stressed that the groups of the Kyrgyz and other local Turkic ethnic groups became the Muslims during the multi-religious Karakhanid era. The authors criticize some Soviet Kyrgyzstani historians who suggested in 1960s–1980s that the Kyrgyz allegedly were Shamanists until the 16th century. The sedentary Kyrgyz and other Turkic people were more strict adepts of Islam than their nomadic tribesmen. The population of nomadic and mountainous parts of Kyrgyzstan were Islamized voluntarily thank to the peaceful and long-term, step-by-step activities of the Sufi missionaries starting from the 10th century in compare with the methods of sword and persecutions by the Arab invaders in the early stages of Islamization of western parts of the Central Asian regions.
Tchoroev Tyntchtykbek, Urstanbekov Beishe. The Main Stages of the Spread of Islam in Kyrgyzstan in the 7th-14th Centuries // Questions of the History of Material and Spiritual Culture of Kyrgyzstan: Collection of scientific articles / Ed. by Abylabek Asankanov. – Frunze: Kyrgyz State University, 1987. –– pp. 28–44.
In Russian: Tchoroev T.K., Urstanbekov B.U. Osnovnyye etapy rasprostraneniya islama v Kirgizstane v VII-XIV vv. // Voprosy istorii material'noy i dukhovnoy kul'tury Kirgizstana: Sbornik nauch. statey / Otv. red. A.A.Asankanov. - Frunze: KirgizGU, 1987. – S. 28-44.

This article explores the theoretical tensions surrounding comparison in contemporary studies of religious pluralism. By engaging Comparative Theology, Hindu-Christian Studies, and the history of religions, it critically assesses whether comparison can serve both as an analytical method and as a normative tool for interreligious dialogue.

The construction of a canon of texts and practices is a serious enterprise that requires the work of specialists and interpreters. Religious canons appear rigid and unchanging, and they aim at imposing from above a standard set of beliefs and practices. Yet, as J.Z. Smith has suggested, a canon is a quite flexible reality. It is neither entirely dependent upon the culture from which it emerges nor passively subject to external cultural innovations. From Smith's point of view, what is crucial in the construction of a canon is the element of closure, which involves the action of interpreters who open, expand and re-close the canon without interrupting the stream of traditional knowledge. Such interpreters have the difficult task to extend the domain of the closed canon over everything hiding all traces of arbitrari-ness, disruption, and discontinuity. To be in and out of the canon is thus a historical sign of the hidden yet dynamic work of extension of the domain of tradition over new fields, practices and relationships. European philologists received the textual tradition of Indian priestly and scholarly elites through a well-established idea of canon, which they identified with the Vedic corpus of texts. But what " Vedic tradition " has meant in the history of the systematization of sacrificial procedure and techniques as well as textual organization is a question that deserves attention. This session invites scholars to discuss conceptions of literary, ideological and disciplinary boundaries in the making of the Vedic " canon ". This will permit to reflect on how the definition of Veda has resulted from forcing its linguistic identity , vision of the world and scholarly applications in field as diverse as ritual science, astrology, mathematics, medicine, prosody, etymology, philosophy, hermeneutics, law and politics. In particular, discourses on the Vedic canon and its use in and beyond Vedic times should privilege perspectives on rupture and innovation, along with the historical analysis of the exegetical efforts conducted to validate and disseminate new authoritative world-views and approaches. While the overall aim of this session is to answer original questions in relation to " canon-making " in Indian history , contributors are invited to consider Vedic studies not just in relation to Indology but as a way to foster methodological debates within the history of religion at large.

This study in Egyptology reviews the myth of Ptah, the creator god of Pharaoh Menes of Memphis. Ptah creates by thinking and speaking; he thinks with his heart and speaks with his mouth. This article explores (1) the phenomenology of speaking to cause action plus it (2) compares Ptah's creation with that of Israel's God in Genesis 1:1-2:4a. Actually, the Ptah myth is better thought of as an example of Henotheism rather than Monotheism.

La figure du singe en Grèce ancienne interroge autant l’historien
de l’imaginaire, capté par une créature dont l’analyse iconographique
reste embryonnaire, que l’anthropologue des religions, tenté d’y voir
une expression emblématique de conceptions ontologiques et religieuses grecques. Si l’introduction de l’animal en Méditerranée et certaines de ses représentations fi guratives doivent beaucoup à l’Orient, son univers, empreint des mystères des représentations de passage, doit d’abord à la Grèce du Ier millénaire av. J-C ses contours particuliers. Le singe, miroir de l’homme, présentait sans doute un enjeu théologique que cette étude introductive, pensée en contrepoint avec les débats philosophiques du darwinisme, choisit d’éclairer.

The monkey as a mirror for man? The issues surrounding
a confrontation in ancient Greece.
The figure of the monkey in ancient Greece appeals both to the historian
of the imagination, who is captivated by this creature whose iconographic study remains embryonic, and to the religious anthropologist, who is tempted to see in it an emblematic expression of Greek ontological and religious concepts. While the animal’s introduction into the Mediterranean region, like some of its fi gurative representations, owes much to the East, the imagery surrounding monkeys, imbued with the mysteries of representations of passage, owes its particular contours to Greece in the fi rst millennium BC. The monkey, a mirror for mankind, certainly presented a theological issue and this introductory study (conceived of in juxtaposition to philosophical debates on Darwinism) will attempt to shed
light upon it.

Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos "[N]ot only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him(Wakan Tanka-the Great Spirit) continually in differing ways."-Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk) A S CONTEMPORARY LIFE BECOMES MORE AND MORE FRAGMENTED AND UNSUSTAINABLE, many individuals are left perplexed and searching for more complete and sustainable models to understand themselves and their place in the world around them. It is the spiritual crisis brought about by a desacralized worldview that began in the modern West with the emergence of the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment that has created an existential and ontological void and uprooted the centrality of the sacred in the lives of the human collectivity. Very few would question or challenge the reality of climate change and the perilous situation of the present day, yet it is often overlooked that indigenous communities have in many cases been impacted the hardest by the environmental crisis and have been on the frontline of the struggle to protect the earth, as witnessed most recently by the events at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The First Peoples of the world provide an integral vision as to how human beings can live in balance and harmony within themselves and simultaneously with the world around them. It needs to be remembered that it was not until relatively recently that the religion and shamanic traditions of the First Peoples-with all their diversity-were viewed to be one of the world's religions itself. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed and put into law in 1978, allowed indigenous peoples to freely practice their traditional religion without fear of persecution. The timeless wisdom of the diverse cultures of the world speaks in a singular voice on the nature of the Absolute or Spirit, which is often referred to as the perennial philosophy (philosophia perennis). Joseph Epes Brown, renowned scholar of the Native American Traditions and World Religions, writes: 112 | PARABOLA FALL 2017 | 113 Book Reviews A sacred service, an open esoteric secretthe Act of Consecration of Man.

Who was Flavius Josephus? Answering this one question, leads to answers to virtually all other questions about ancient history. The answer is that he was Arrius Calpurnius Piso, a royal Roman. He wrote under the alias of Flavius Josephus and pretended to be a Jew. He was of Jewish descent, on his mother's side. Please read on and learn.

In this paper we explore the work of Mircea Eliade, originally entitled “Aspects du Myth” (1963), in the light of Paul Ricoeur´s analysis of the hermeneutic field. From an anthropological perspective, we are interested in finding points of contact between the work of both scholars and its approach to the universe of mythic production and the sacred. At the same time, we consider that both Eliade and Ricouer elaborate their work from a perspective nourished by western intellectual tradition, even though they were interested
with larger or lesser detail in the ways of other cultures. In this sense, we shall point out how in the analyses of myths, rituals and religions, Eliade proposes modern man and its society as present or implicit interlocutors, living their own way both the sacred and the
mythic. We believe this comparison is a key, since it demonstrates the geocultural position from which he carries out his studies.

Este estudio brinda al lector una primera aproximación histórica a la presencia protestante en la Amazonia colombiana empleando una amplia gama de archivos que junto con su experiencias de campo entre los Nukak permitieron al autor reconstruir en profundidad el caso de la organización religiosa fundamentalista de origen norteamericano New Tribes Mission o Misión Nuevas Tribus. Con un énfasis hacia los llamados pueblos aislados, tema que se aborda también en este libro, los primeros miembros de esta organización arribaron a Colombia hace más de 60 años y la representante más mencionada en diversas fuentes fue Sophie Muller, quien es reconocida como el agente que mayor cambio cultural produjo entre los indígenas de la zona trifronteriza de Colombia, Venezuela y Brasil.

Maria Raffaella Cornacchia -Le lune inquietanti di Piero Meldini C'era la luna piena, di quelle che trasformano il mondo in fantasma, quando tutte le cose, le animate e le inanimate, stanno sussurrando misteriose rivelazioni, ma ciascuna dicendo la sua, e tutte discordanti, perciò non riusciamo a capire e patiamo quest'angoscia di essere sul punto di conoscerle e di non conoscerle.

Despite the explosion of interest in Jewish mysticism in recent decades, scholars have only recently begun to explore in any depth how mystical texts function as literature. This includes not just literary readings of Jewish mystical texts, but also extends to questions of mystical and literary efficacy. In other words, what kinds of strategies are employed in Jewish mystical writing to convey mystical content and ethos, to shape religious subjectivity in distinctive ways, or even to influence the cosmos through specialized acts of writing and reading (i.e., producing and consuming literature)? Moreover, how do these literary and mystical projects intersect, reinforce, and possibly even place limits upon one another in different textual settings? Finally, how might consideration of these topics change the way we think about Jewish literary studies more broadly?