While searching for something else yesterday, I came across the Chicago Maroon’s 2008 interview of Jonathan Z. Smith, a leading historian of religion and author of several important books in the field, including Map Is Not Territory, Imagining Religion, and Drudgery Divine. You can find the full text of the interview here. If you have [...]
Tags:comparative religious history·Drudgery Divine·Greek myth·Hegel·historian of religions·History·Imagining Religion·J.Z. Smith·Jonathan Z. Smith·Map Is Not Territory·New Testament·Supriya Sinhababu·Yale Divinity School
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
