Among scholars and historians of religion, there has long been an unfortunate tendency to treat myth as mere text — disembodied, free-floating, timeless, and ahistorical. In such non-contexts, myth is considered to be something universal or essential, that which captures and expresses archetypes, or even worse, an archaic and tentative approach to monotheism.
In the fifth [...]
Tags:ahistorical·archaic·archetype·Carl Jung·disembodied·history·Homo faber·Homo religiosus·Imagining Religion·incipient monotheism·interpretation·Io·Io myth·Jonathan Z. Smith·Karl Marx·Maori cosmology·Maori creation myth·Mircea Eliade·monotheism·myth·native·primordial·text·timeless·universal
This is the question asked by Philip Goldberg in a recent article in which he boldly answers yes: “Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws. The same can be said for Buddhism, which derives from the same Vedic roots.”
Setting aside for a [...]
Tags:ahistorical·Buddhism·C.W. Huntington·critique·eastern religions·elites·empiricism·enlightenment·essentializing·Gregory Schopen·Hinduism·intellectuals·Jonathan Z. Smith·Philip Goldberg·reconstructed Buddhism·Religion and Other Products of Empire·Richard Horsley·Robert Sharf·science·social construction·The Zen of Japanese Nationalism·Vedic·Western consumption·Zen Buddhism
