Sooner or later any serious student or historian of religion will encounter Jonathan Z. Smith, he of the infamous quip — “there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study.” A curious statement indeed coming from one of the most prominent historians of religion, whose entire career and oeuvre [...]
Tags:classification schemes·costly signaling·essentializing·F. Max Muller·group level selection·Imagining Religion: From Bablyon to Jonestown·increased fertility·Jonathan Z. Smith·moral glue·multilinear evolution·religious cartography·religious classification·religious history·religious phylogeny·religious taxonomy·ritual signaling·science of religion·social cohesion·unilinear evolution
If one is going to do a history of religions (as I am), then it is always good to read a history of the scholarship that comprises the “history of religions.” With this in mind, I am nearly finished with Hans Kippenberg’s Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age. It is a wonderful work of [...]
