Guy G Stroumsa

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Comparative Religion, Emeritus

University of Oxford, Faculty of Theology and Religion, Emeritus

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Guy G. Stroumsa is Martin Buber Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Emeritus of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, and Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. He is a Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, of the British Academy, and of the Academia Europea, and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich. He received the Humboldt Research Award, the Leopold-Lucas Prize, and the Rothschild Prize. He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite.

Author of fifteen books and more than one hundred and forty articles, editor or co-editor of twenty-one books. Among his recent publications: Religions d’Abraham: histoires croisées (Geneva, 2017), The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, Mass, 2016), The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2015), A New Science: the Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), and The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations of Late Antiquity (Chicago, 2009; paperback 2012; Original French edition, 2005; also Italian, German and Hebrew translations).

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Articles & Reviews by Guy G Stroumsa

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Study of Religion and the Spirit of Orientalism: Cultural Transformations and Scholarly Shifts,” in Hans-Peter Grosshans, ed., Religion and Change: Fourth Annual Conference 2021 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023): 63-76

Religion and Change, 2023

Like all social institutions, religions constantly change, evolving and transforming themselves. ... more Like all social institutions, religions constantly change, evolving and transforming themselves. Sometimes, when one can speak of brutal transformations and of religious revolutions, this truism is obvious to all.1 But more often, the conatus of religions entails their more or less 'peaceful' evolution. Now, while all religions have a potential for radical transformation in their DNA, they are instinctively more inclined toward conservatism, and the function of their hermeneutical systems, while permitting change when deemed necessary or unavoidable, consists essentially in slowing down the pace of such change, and making sure, it goes unnoticed, or almost unnoticed. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics, has shown that we all function with two parallel systems of thought: 'Thinking, Fast and Slow,' as he entitled his book on the topic. Similarly, I propose we identify two alternate patterns of religious change: slow versus fast. Religion and society at large, then, are complementary motors, actors, and objects of change in history. In a permanent dialectical relationship with one another, religion and society are taking turns at initiating change, responding to it, modulating it, and transforming the direction, intensity, and even the very nature of this change. In a recently published book, The Idea of Semitic Monotheism: The Rise and Fall of a Scholarly Myth, I sought to understand some societal dimensions of the idea of Semitic monotheism, an idea coined by Ernest Renan in the mid-19th century and developed in European scholarship in the subsequent decades. This idea was interdependent with both new perceptions of Judaism and Islam and transformed attitudes toward Jews and Muslims. Hence, I tried to highlight various veiled connections between the history of religions, then a growing scholarly discipline, and some deep changes in European societies, related to secularization processes. I shall present a few preliminary reflections on this research here, which, I think, bear directly on the topic of our conference, from a particular but capital angle. It barely needs mentioning that since the early modern Great Discoveries, 1 This text was read (on zoom) as a keynote lecture at the Conference of the European Academy of Religion in Münster on September 1, 2021. I wish to thank Professor Hans-Peter Grosshans for his kind invitation to deliver the lecture. The text is adapted from the introduction to my Guy G.

format_quoteThe idea of Semitic monotheism evolved in Europe, shaping societal views on Judaism and Islam, reflecting a shift in understanding.format_quote

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Guy G. Stroumsa, “Renan, le judaïsme et l’islam: Orientalisme et monothéisme,” in Mara Rescio, et al., eds., Non uno itinere Ebraismi, cristianesimi, modernità: Studi in onore di Mauro Pesce in occasione del suo ottantesimo compleanno [=Humanitas, no. 76] (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2021), 529-538

Tout au long du 19e siècle, la naissance de ce qu'on peut appeler philologia orientalis, et la dé... more Tout au long du 19e siècle, la naissance de ce qu'on peut appeler philologia orientalis, et la découverte des affinités entre le Sanskrit et les langues européennes transformèrent de façon radicale la perception de l'Orient. Le cas d'Ernest Renan est ici emblématique. Renan (1823-1892) est, de loin, la figure centrale de l'histoire des religions en France, et fait partie, au xix e siècle, des savants européens les plus remarquables. Dans L'avenir de la science, un livre de jeunesse qui représente sa réaction aux évènements de 1848, même s'il ne fut publié que deux ans avant sa mort, il écrit: «L'étude comparée des religions, quand elle sera définitivement établie sur la base solide de la critique, formera le plus beau chapitre de l'histoire de l'esprit humain, entre l'histoire des mythologies et l'histoire des philosophies» 1. La figure de Renan est impressionnante: jeune séminariste breton arrivé à Paris de Tréguier, son village natal, il perdit vite la foi, convaincu que l'étude critique de la Bible réfutait l'interprétation catholique des Écritures. Une carrière fulgurante le porta, à trente-sept ans, à la chaire d'hébreu du Collège de France 2. Renan, cependant, ne se satisfaisait pas de sa recherche en philologie sémitique. Il rédigea plusieurs travaux historiques capitaux, des réflexions philosophiques, et même quelques textes littéraires, ainsi que ses mémoires. Sans être politiquement actif, il s'exprima souvent dans l'arène publique, traitant d'un large éventail de sujets. Je pense en particulier à son essai sur l'idée de nation, sans doute son texte le plus célèbre aujourd'hui 3. Bien que Renan se présentât comme étant, fondamentalement, un philologue, c'est manifestement dans une autre clé que celle des biblistes et historiens des religions allemands qu'il s'exprimait. Son travail n'était pas moins technique et méticuleux que le leur, mais il conservait des hori

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Guy G. Stroumsa, “Reading Origen in Jerusalem,” Tablet Magazine (26 July 2021)

Reading Origen in Jerusalem A collection of 29 recently discovered homilies by the early Church F... more

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Guy G. Stroumsa, “When the Orient Moved East: Judaism and Islam in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship,” in Sarah Stroumsa and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds., Eine dreifältige Schnur: Über Judentum, Christentum, und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 126-209

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Guy G. Stroumsa, “Afterword: The God of Time and the End of Times,” in Domenico Agostini and Samuel Thrope, eds., The Bundahišn: The Zoroastrian Book of Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 195-198

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Guy G. Stroumsa, “Do as you’d be done by – Review of ‘The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts’, by Karen Armstrong,” Times Literary Supplement (TLS) (27 March 2020): 32