34 Religion

Studying the Bible: The Tanakh and Early Christian Writings

Studying the Bible: The Tanakh and Early Christian Writings is a university-level, textbook introduction to the study of the Bible, its literary forms, and historical and cultural contexts. This textbook examines the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Tanakh) and the early Christian writings of the New Testament. It is an introduction to the analysis of biblical texts, their histories, and their interpretations. The emphasis throughout this textbook is on the literary qualities of these biblical texts as well as their cultural and historical contexts. Reviews are available.

Six Ways of Being Religious: A Framework for Comparative Studies of Religion

The book proposes the hypothesis that six generic ways of being religious may be found in any large-scale religious tradition such as Christianity or Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism: sacred rite, right action, devotion, shamanic mediation, mystical quest, and reasoned inquiry. These are recurrent ways in which, socially and individually, devout members of these traditions take up and appropriate their stories and symbols in order to draw near to, and come into right relationship with, what the traditions attest to be the ultimate reality. Reviews are available.

Includes: Chapter summaries, study questions, and glossary

The Bible and Music

The Bible and Music by Dr. James F. McGrath provides an introduction and overview of the various ways that music and the Bible have been and continue to be connected. Part 1 focuses on history: how music in the Ancient Near East sounded, how markings in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible have been interpreted as musical symbols, how chanting of biblical texts has featured liturgically in synagogues and churches, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, and musical developments in North America as enslaved Africans encountered biblical texts and stories. Part 2 focuses on specific texts in Jewish and Christian scripture and looks at how they have been interpreted through the process of setting them to music, including the soundtracks of cinematic depictions of biblical narrative and allusions to the Bible in popular music. Part 3 focuses on composers from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Philosophy of Western Religions

Appropriate for an introductory philosophy of religion class.

Includes: Review and discussion questions

World Religions: the Spirit Searching

This text, while full of various ways that people have searched and discovered and created, covers a few of the bigger traditions in our world.  Each chapter introduces the reader to some ideas from that specific tradition that enlighten them as to how a specific group of people think, believe, and live.

Includes: Videos, links to resources

World Mythology: Gods and Creation

Covers Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Egypt, West Africa, Greece, China, Japan, Northern Europe, British Isles, South America, Mesoamerica, and North America.

Roman Gods

Drawing exclusively on the evidence from urban Rome up to the age of Constantine, the book analyzes the pagan, Jewish, and Christian concepts of “god” along the lines of space, time, personnel, function, iconography and ritual.

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the connection between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter addresses the place of non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion. Reviews are available.

Includes: Glossary, questions to consider

Introduction to South and East Asian Philosopher Reader: An Open Educational Resource

This Introduction to South and East Asian Philosopher Reader was developed as an Open Textbook for use in a lower-level Philosophy course at a California community college. It contains many of the classic and important works in East and South Asian Philosophies as well as some historical and biographical information. This work is effectively an anthology of many important works in Philosophy that are freely available.

The Sacred and the Sovereign

Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture

Current preoccupations with the body have led to a growing interest in the intersections between religion, literature and the history of medicine, and, more specifically, how they converge within a given culture. This collection of essays explores the ways in which aspects of medieval culture were predicated upon an interaction between medical and religious discourses, particularly those inflected by contemporary gendered ideologies. The essays interrogate this convergence broadly in a number of different ways: textually, conceptually, historically, socially and culturally. They argue for an inextricable relationship between the physical and spiritual in accounts of health, illness and disability, and demonstrate how medical, religious and gender discourses were integrated in medieval culture.

Christianity, Islam, and Orisa Religion: Three Traditions in Comparison and Interaction

The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria are exceptional for the copresence among them of three religious traditions: Islam, Christianity, and the indigenous oriṣa religion. In this comparative study, at once historical and anthropological, Peel explores the intertwined character of the three religions and the dense imbrication of religion in all aspects of Yoruba history up to the present.

Ethnicity, Race, Religion: Identities and Ideologies in Early Jewish and Christian Texts, and in Modern Biblical Interpretation

Religion, ethnicity and race are facets of identity that have become increasingly contested. The modern discipline of biblical studies developed in the context of Western Europe, concurrent with the emergence of various racial and imperial ideologies. The essays in this volume deal both with historical facets of ethnicity and race in antiquity, in particular in relation to the identities of Jews and Christians, and also with the critique of scholarly ideologies and racial assumptions which have shaped biblical studies.

On the Significance of Religion in Conflict and Conflict Resolution

In this essay collection, the authors analyze the role of religion in conflict and conflict resolution. They do so from the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, while bringing different disciplines into play, including peace and conflict studies, religious studies, theology and ethics.

Lived Religion and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Politics, Religion and Gender: Framing and Regulating the Veil

Heated debates about Muslim women’s veiling practices have regularly attracted the attention of European policymakers over the last decade. Seeking to establish why the issue has become part of the disciplinary practices of some European countries but not of others, this work brings together an important collection of interpretative research regarding the current debates on the veil in Europe, offering an interdisciplinary scope and European-wide setting. Brought together through a common research methodology, the contributors focus on the different religious, political and cultural meanings of the veiling issue across eight countries and develop a comparative explanation of veiling regimes. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion & politics, gender studies and multiculturalism.

Essays in Anarchism and Religion

Anarchism and religion have historically had an uneasy relationship. Yet, ever since the emergence of anarchism as an intellectual and political movement, a considerable number of religious anarchists have insisted that their religious tradition necessarily implies an anarchist political stance. Their stories are finally gaining increasing public and scholarly attention. Reflecting both a rise of interest in anarchist ideas and activism on the one hand, and the revival of religious ideas and movements in the political sphere on the other, this book examines a range of examples of overlaps and contestations between the two from a diverse range of academic perspectives. The first pioneering volume of Essays in Anarchism & Religion comprises eight essays from leading international scholars on topics ranging from the anarchism of the historical Jesus to Zen Buddhism and the philosophies of Max Stirner and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. In a world where political ideas increasingly matter once more, and religion is an increasingly visible aspect of global political life, these essays offer scholarly analysis of overlooked activists, ideas and movements, and as such reveal the possibility of a powerful critique of contemporary global society.

Making Religion and Human Rights at the United Nations

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems– both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

Medicine – Religion – Spirituality: Global Perspectives on Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Healing

In modern societies the functional differentiation of medicine and religion is the predominant paradigm. Contemporary therapeutic practices and concepts in healing systems, such as Transpersonal Psychology, Ayurveda, as well as Buddhist and Anthroposophic medicine, however, are shaped by medical as well as religious or spiritual elements. This book investigates configurations of the entanglement between medicine, religion, and spirituality in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa.

The Emergence of Modern Hinduism: Religion on the Margins of Colonialism

The Emergence of Modern Hinduism argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernization.

Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India

In Hindu Pluralism, Elaine M. Fisher complicates the traditional scholarly narrative of the unification of Hinduism. By calling into question the colonial categories implicit in the term “sectarianism,” Fisher’s work excavates the pluralistic textures of precolonial Hinduism in the centuries prior to British intervention. Drawing on previously unpublished sources in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu, Fisher argues that the performance of plural religious identities in public space in Indian early modernity paved the way for the emergence of a distinctively non-Western form of religious pluralism. This work provides a critical resource for understanding how Hinduism developed in the early modern period, a crucial era that set the tenor for religion’s role in public life in India through the present day.

Jewish Religion After Theology

Jewish Religion After Theology ponders one of the most intriguing shifts in modern Jewish thought: from a metaphysical and theological standpoint toward a new manner of philosophizing based primarily on practice. Different chapters study this great shift and its various manifestations. The central figure of this new examination is Isaiah Leibowitz, whose thoughts encapsulate more than any other Jewish thinker this stance of religion without metaphysics. Sagi explores corresponding issues such as observance, the possibility of pluralism, the meaning of penance without messianic suppositions, and pragmatic coping with theodicy after the Holocaust, presenting the different possibilities within this great alteration in Jewish thought.

Faithful Translators: Authorship, Gender, and Religion in Early Modern England

With Faithful Translators Jaime Goodrich offers the first in-depth examination of women’s devotional translations and of religious translations in general within early modern England. Placing female translators such as Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, alongside their male counterparts, such as Sir Thomas More and Sir Philip Sidney, Goodrich argues that both male and female translators constructed authorial poses that allowed their works to serve four distinct cultural functions: creating privacy, spreading propaganda, providing counsel, and representing religious groups. Ultimately, Faithful Translators calls for a reconsideration of the apparent simplicity of “faithful” translations and aims to reconfigure perceptions of early modern authorship, translation, and women writers.

Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Approaching Religious Transformations from Archaeology, History and Classics

The Lived Ancient Religion project has radically changed perspectives on ancient religions and their supposedly personal or public character. This volume applies and further develops these methodological tools, new perspectives and new questions.

On the Significance of Religion for Global Diplomacy