scholarly journals Ritualistics: a New Discipline in the History of Religions

1993 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jørgen Podemann Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Inherent Feature ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
Specific Discipline ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The history of Religions is in need of subdisciplines. Those that it has are mostly derived from other academic disciplines such as psychology, sociology, or, to mention a more recent invention, aesthetics. Interdisciplinary studies are in many ways a characteristic, inherent feature of the humanities, and certainly not to be resented or mistrusted. It is, however, worth noticing that the History of Religions has only one discipline entirely of its own: a comparative, cross-cultural, religio-specific discipline sometimes called the phenomenology of religion. The study of ritual is more than just the study of a very broad. It is with a view to the further exploration of the way meaning and form are put to work in ritual, and the way ritual determines and conditions  the form of representations, that ritualistics can be suggested  as a new discipline.

Women’s Journeys in the Study of Religion

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Morny Joy
Keyword(s):  
International Association ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Comparative Religion ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Decisive Influence ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women Scholars ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Way

In 1995, Professor Ursula King published an edited volume, Religion and Gender. This volume comprised a collection of essays that had been presented at the International Association of the History of Religions (IAHR) conference in Rome, 1990. As such, it marked a milestone: it was the first published volume that featured work undertaken solely by women in the history of the IAHR. In her own Introduction, Professor King drew attention to a number of important topics, such as ‘gender’, ‘postmodernism’, that were being debated at that time. The volume remains a testament to Professor King, and her dedication to, as well as support of women’s scholarship in the discipline on the Study of Religions, and to what was then called Comparative Religion. A subsequent volume, edited together with Tina Beattie, Gender, Religion and Diversity: Cross Cultural Perspectives (2004), addressed more complex issues that had emerged in the intervening years. This later volume provided another platform from which to explore not only developments in gender, but a number of other crucial topics, including postcolonialism and globalization. In this essay, I propose to follow the effects of such issues as addressed or acknowledged by Professor King in her various works, as well as to examine the further expansion and qualification of these topics in more recent years. This essay will thus explore issues that have had a formative and even decisive influence on the way that women scholars in the Study of Religions today approach the discipline. I will look to certain of my own essays that appeared in Professor King’s edited volumes as well as essays by other contemporary women scholars in order to illustrate these developments.

Opt traduceri mai puțin cunoscute ale lui Mircea Eliade din Aldo Mieli, Raffaele Pettazzoni și Sylvain Lévi

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Andreea Apostu
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Cultural Transfer ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

This paper aims to analyze the way in which Mircea Eliade became, in 1926, a vector of the cultural and scientific transfer between Western Europe and Romania, through his translations of eight fragments from Aldo Mieli, Raffaele Pettazzoni and Sylvain Lévi’s major works. Two out of these eight translations seem to have been ignored to this day by researchers, whilst the others have only been mentioned in passing. The choices made by Eliade, the context in which these translations were published (the journal Orizontul/The Horizon and its public, the precarious state of the history of religions at that time in Romania etc.) and their echoes in Eliade’s works prove that they can be seen as an example of cultural transfer. They also play an important part in the foundation of the history of religions as a discipline in Romania, being, in a way, the textual equivalents of Eliade’s institutional aspiration to found an association and a library for the study of religions, as expressed in his letters to Raffaele Pettazzoni.

Conceptualisations of xoshbaxti (‘happiness / prosperity’) and baxt (‘fate / luck’) in Persian

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farzad Sharifian ◽  
Mehri Bagheri
Keyword(s):  
Word Association ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
European Language ◽  
Association Task ◽  
Married Life ◽  
Multidisciplinary Nature ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Linguistics ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper explores conceptualisations of xoshbaxti (‘happiness / prosperity’) and baxt (‘fate / luck’) in Persian, adopting a combined historical and contemporary analysis. The expression xoshbaxti consists of the free morphemes xosh (‘pleasant’) and baxt (‘fate’). The root of baxt originates from the Proto-Indo-European language (bʰeh₂g). An historical analysis returning all the way to the Proto-Indo-Iranian religion shows that the concept of baxt captured the idea of a pre-determined destiny by conceptualising Bhaga as a god who dispenses fortune. Data from a number of Persian encyclopaedias, dictionaries and weblogs, as well as a word association task carried out by a group of speakers of Persian, revealed that xoshbaxti in contemporary Persian is largely associated with what is considered to be a “good” married life. Overall, the findings of this study illustrate the usefulness of combining diachronic and synchronic approaches when analysing cultural conceptualisations. The study also shows that attempts to trace the historical roots of cultural conceptualisations may benefit from insights gained in other fields, such as the history of religions. In this context, the multidisciplinary nature of the newly developed field of Cultural Linguistics provides an effective basis for cross-disciplinary openness, which has the potential to deepen the scope of analyses undertaken.

The stranger at the sea: Mythopoesis in the Qur'ân and early tafsîr

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-279
Author(s):  
Aaron Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Near Eastern ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
Sacred Scripture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Stranger ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

This study's point of departure is a famous statement issued by Charles Adams in 1967 that contends that the History of Religions and Islamic Studies are essentially incompatible. In revisiting Adams' claim, this study examines the use of myth and mythopoesis in the Qur'ân. For within this sacred scripture there exist many mythemes that connect it, both linguistically and structurally, to wider and deeper semiotics of meaning. The particular focus is on Qur'ân 8:60-82, which recounts Moses' encounter with a mysterious stranger at "the place where the two seas meet." After some methodological reflections, I examine the Qur'ân's ability to absorb, transform, and subsequently erase previous near eastern narratives. Following this, I examine the way in which Tabari, a 10th-century exegete, attempted to make sense of this passage in such a manner as to connect it explicitly back to these earlier narratives.

Roots of the Two Sides of Kamakhya

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo E. Rosati
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Blended Spaces ◽  
Shed Light

The shrine of Kamakhya (Assam) was supposed to be the eminent yogini-pitha. Inside the sanctum of Kamakhya a yoni (vulva) stone is concealed as the main cultic image of the Goddess, which Kaulism identified as the 'mouth of the yoginis'. This article analyses the symbolism related to the Tantric cult of the yoni and its historical evolution through the combined lens of History of Religions and Cognitive Science of Religions. Kamakhya thus emerges as a hyper-blended space, whose origin should be tracked down to the intersection of death symbolism related to the non-Brahmanic cult of Heruka and his retinue of yoginis and the Kaula erotic reformation of the cult of the yoginis. Therefore, the yoginis played a fundamental role in the construction of Kamakhya--as either a caring mother or as a dreadful mother--conveying other blended spaces to the yoni metonymic symbol. Hence, this article aims, through the analysis and interrelation of textual, epigraphic and material evidence, to debate the dialectic between eros and thanatos in order to shed light on the overlap, superimposition and blend of trans- and cross-cultural elements in the multifarious goddess Kamakhya.

The Qur'an's Contribution to Biblical Criticism

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Muhammad Khalifa Hasan
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Critical Awareness ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamic Science ◽  
Muslim Scholars ◽  
The Way ◽  
Ibn Hazm

The Islamic science of Biblical Criticism is one of the earliest to emerge from the study of the Qur'an. It was developed by Muslim scholars specialising in the history of religions and reached its peak with the contributions of Ibn Ḥazm al-Andalūsī in the fifth/twelfth century. This ‘traditional’ Islamic science has more recently been complemented by the incorporation of Western Biblical Criticism Theory in the works of Raḥmat Allah al-Hindī, Ismāʿīl al-Fārūqī, Muḥammad Khalīfa Ḥasan, and others. This study will seek to determine the role of the Qur'an in the establishment of the Islamic science of Biblical Criticism and its centrality as a source for this discipline, through the elaboration of certain principles, such as the moderating position of the Qur'an between the Tanakh and Christian Bible, and the moderating position of Islam between Judaism and Christianity. Among these principles are the Qur'an's critical awareness and theories of taḥrīf and tabdīl, for example. The objectivity of the Qur'an is shown in the way it accepts previous revealed texts, and acknowledges them as a matter of belief, while seeking at the same time to conclusively clarify the revelation. In conclusion, this paper urges the usefulness of the Qur'an as a source of Biblical Criticism and Jewish and Christian interpretation and exegesis of the Tanakh and the Christian Bible.

scholarly journals Ritualistik - en ny religionshistorisk disciplin

1992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jørgen Podemann Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Distinct Level ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Thematic Approach ◽  
Divine Kingship ◽  
Theoretical Considerations ◽  
Level Of Analysis

The idea of ritualistics as a new discipline in history of religions is based on practical as well as theoretical considerations. The broad, comparative discipline sometimes called the phenomenology of religion has above all adressed a number of interesting themes, usually without distinguishing levels of analysis. In discussions of themes like the idea of god or divine kingship, the failure to recognize ritual as a distinct level not immediately compatible with levels of beliefs, ideas, attitudes etc. has entailed inconsistencies and subsequent diacronical fragmentation of contemporary source material. By introducing the new discipline of ritualistics to replace part of the phenomenology of religion, it may be hoped that some of the pitfalls of an uncritical thematic approach may be avoided. Ritualistics is not in itself a new method, but a discipline that defines a level of analysis as do linguistic disciplines like phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics; it may thus be considered a first step towards an analogous theoretical contruction of the object of history of religions.

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