History Of Religion Research Articles

Elements of Luo Traditional Sacrifice: An Anthropological Approach

Every religion has some form of sacrifice. In fact, sacrifice is the most widespread of all rituals. It derived from two Latin words: “sacer”, which means holy, sacred or set apart and “facere,” which means to do or to make. So, to sacrifice is to make holy or to set something apart for supernatural powers. Most rituals imply an offering and quite often a blood sacrifice. A blood sacrifice is a displacement of mystical forces made possible by God himself, thanks to the intercession of a spirit, divinity or ancestor and the mediation of a priest for the satisfaction of the sacrificing community. The blood of the victim, when poured on the altar, releases the vital force contained in it and feeds the spiritual beings directly alerted by the words of the priest. We have here an offering of food given to the sacred forces, which gives life to the sacrificing community through a common meal. We also have the words of the priest to the divinity or ancestor who intercedes to God. The response of God comes in an inverted way: it goes to the sacrificing community through the ancestor and the priest. Note here that God does not feed on the blood of the victim; God is the very source of the vital force; for him the vital force does not diminish. It is the whole community, which performs what we can call the rite of diverted violence. When the animal is killed, sometimes very cruelly, the violence, which would be directed to people is done on the animal, which is their substitute. It is at the same time an elevated violence since it is transported from the profane to the sacred. It is also a transcended violence since it enables the community to transfer the grudges, rivalries, hatred, tension and the tendencies of aggression within it to an animal victim. This is the way the community “deceives” its own violence by directing it to victims which do not call for vengeance. All in all, sacrifice in whatever form is for respect of life, that is, in sacrifice, life is not lost; it just becomes sublime. Sacrifice occupies a fundamental place in the practice of African traditional religion. It is through sacrifices that the African relates to the spiritual. The religious nature of African ritual, as historians of religions have stressed, is such that: “A ritual is religious, if it carries an ultimate value, meaning, sacrality and significance for someone, that is, if it somehow functions for someone as the foundation of what is considered real and sacred” (Richard 1978: 65).

Judahite Hebrew Epigraphy and Cult

This article presents a tentative review of the information about First Temple-period Judahite cult, which historians of religion can glean from the various inscriptions discovered so far. It surveys the various deities, sanctuaries, cultic rites, and feast days mentioned. When an inscription’s reading, dating, or interpretation is controversial, I take a stand as an epigrapher but also consider the archaeological context and biblical literature. This status quaestionis seems to capture an important historical evolution of Juhadite cult.

Coincidentia oppositorum как особый способ мышления и образ жизни теолога

Introduction. The acquisition of scientific status by theology requires the theological community to introduce a special thesaurus into scientific circulation, as well as to develop the methodology of theology itself. In this connection we consider it expedient to turn to comprehension of Coincidentia oppositorum which will promote the expansion of theological vocabulary, paying special attention to the principle of combining opposites in theological research and formation of a special type of dialectical thinking, inherent to a theologian. Theoretical analysis. The presented research analyzes, systematizes and introduces in chronological order the ideas of philosophers, historians of religion, psychologists and theologians who pay considerable attention to the dialectical (paradoxical) type of thinking. Conclusion. An attempt has been made to comprehend the concept of “Coincidentia oppositorum” considered as one of the principles shaping the theologian’s thinking, as well as a special way of dialectical thinking, aimed at achieving a high unity of coincidence of opposites, which results in “a beautiful harmony of transcendental beauty”, overcoming the laws of contradiction, thereby giving birth to a new “Higher Logic”, acting in defiance of the finiteness of reason, by means of heroic tension breaking through it into a new ontological form, leading it beyond, taking it to the heights of human possibility in relation to God.

Живе повсякдення давнини: перше видання діаріуша Пилипа Орлика 1725 і 1726 рр.

Walentyna Sobol’s new book is timed to a double date: the 350th birth anniversary and the 280th death anniversary of the famous personality: the poet, writer, and hetman of Ukraine Pylyp Orlyk (1672–1742). Walentyna Sobol analysed all the most important academic literature on Pylyp Orlyk’s work, and carried out thorough research, read out the manuscript text of the Diary of 1725 and 1726. Her many years of work on the manuscript and its publication took place in several stages. First, an abridged copy of Diary, made in 1830 by anonymous palaeographers, was read. Then the diary manuscript of 1724 was read. In the course of the next stage, in 2012, the researcher got hold of the original manuscript of Orlyk’ Diary, which is kept in the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France. Walentyna Sobol compared the facsimile edition with the original and found fragments of the manuscript missing from the facsimile. The researcher concludes that Orlyk’s text shows a combination of the education received by the hetman in Vilnius and finalised in Kyiv with European influences. This is confirmed by both the content of the notes and their form. Baroque features of notes, and Latin-Polish macaronisms are not just a tribute to fashion but also evidence of belonging to a specific literary tradition because, in the manuscripts of letters and diaries of many pupils of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, we see similar linguistic features. The first edition of Orlyk’s diary from 1725 and 1726 is an inexhaustible source of information for researchers in various fields, such as historians of religion, palaeographers, cultural anthropologists, linguists studying the languages spoken in the first half of the eighteenth century – Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Old Polish, Old French – their importance in the activities of European political elites.

Simbolismul solstițiului de vară. Lecturi comparative, Iosefina Blazsani-Batto

In the book Symbolism of the Summer Solstice: Comparative Readings, Iosefina Blazsani-Batto approaches, through a comparative perspective, a theme with wide resonances in Romanian folkloric mythology, but also in the universal one, taken up by many historians of religions, exegetes and, last but not least, writers. The wide area of research reflects the author's desire to document as well as possible the scholarly approach to the theme and to give secondary importance to field sources, as well as to imaginative elaborations of them. The research, especially through its various hermeneutic possibilities, is a meritorious achievement which, complemented by the author's constant preoccupation with this field, offers a textually illustrated field of analysis of the subject, both in terms of theory (ethnography) and folklore and literature.

Mississippi River Valley Voodoo

When visiting New Orleans, it is easy to assume that Voodoo, as practiced by the likes of the nineteenth-century “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans” Marie Laveau, is alive and well, as evidenced by the Voodoo-inspired tourist shops, merchandise, and art that are ubiquitous in the French Quarter. Such is not quite the case. Following more than a century of suppression, the religion that throve into the late nineteenth century was struggling to survive by the 1940s and may have ceased to exist as a living faith shortly thereafter. While some scholars have suggested that the African American Spiritual churches of New Orleans are modern manifestations of Voodoo, these congregations lack key features of the historical Voodoo religion and have but a tenuous connection with it. The city’s current practitioners of Voodoo, meanwhile, tend to be initiates of Haitian Vodou or West African Vodun. Ultimately, Lower Mississippi River Valley Voodoo, both in New Orleans and elsewhere, is best understood as a historical religion rather than a living tradition. Contemporary practitioners of “New Orleans Voodoo” are constructing an emerging religion from elements of African diasporic belief in a city deeply imbued with a legacy of Voodoo.

Modern-day Religious and Spiritualism

Religious art or sacred art is artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Sacred art involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the path of the spiritual realization within the artist's religious tradition. A religious image, sometimes called a votive image, is a work of visual art that is representational and has a religious purpose, subject, or connection. All major historical religions have made some use of religious images, although their use is strictly controlled and often controversial in many religions. Hajra Ahmed’s as a young artist of the present era engendering a unorthodox contribution towards contemporary art of Pakistan and out of the mundane she has done tremendous religious art with aura of religious places of Pakistan. She has captured the passing moment and grasped the essence of the moment transpiring on the religious spot just like a ceremony of a memory through which a observer can understand the same feel which has been captured by the artist. In her paintings she strives to depict the exact situation by the great combo of naturalism and realism. Fresh colors have been used to enhance the personification of tariqat. Apart from the moment she also painted the shrines architecture in an actual manner which represent a symbolism of Islamic art and spiritualism.

Denying the Divinity of Christ and Proving the Prophethood of Muhammad in the Context of Comparative Religions: The Debate as a Model


 
 
 
 ABSTRACT
 Muslim academics have been familiar with theological and scientific debates from the early ages. Islam's academics and the members of the Ahl-AlKitab engaged in theological debates throughout the religion's history, touching on a wide range of topics related to worship, belief, dogma and more. The most prominent of these was their assertion that Jesus is God while also rejecting that Jesus preached the message of Muhammad. The verses in the Holy Qur'an, as well as the distorted bible, were evidence against them. These Muslim academics debunked the Christians' claims that Jesus is divine. They invalidated the Christian academics and provided evidence for what had been surmised from corrupted biblical accounts: that Jesus was informed of Muhammad's message and purpose.
 
 
 

THE IMPORTANCE, CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE BASIC CONCEPTS ADDRESSED BY MIRCEA ELIADE IN HIS STUDIES ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

Religion, which is first and foremost a state of belief and faith, in other words, a phenomenon unique to humanity, is the subject of research in the history of religions as well as many other disciplines within the scope of religious sciences. The discipline of history of religions not only fulfills an important function today because it comparatively analyzes the phenomenon of religion, religious issues, and the manifestations of the sacred in different religions, but also evolves in a unique line of thinking and understanding like other social sciences. Mircea Eliade is the most important philosopher and historian of religions who grew up in the 20th century in the field of History of Religions, progressed in the line of Rudolf Otto and made his main contribution to this discipline in the hermeneutic sense. Throughout his life, Eliade did not use the basic concepts he used in his work in the field of history of religions in a purely literal sense, but rather he gave these concepts more ontological, semantic, and meaningful significance as he approached them from a broader perspective. Eliade, who frequently uses concepts such as the sacred, profane, homo religiosus, symbol, initiation, image, myth, hierophany, mana, taboo, archetype in his studies and works, emphasizes the reality of these concepts and their importance for both primitive and modern societies and reveals their historical manifestations. In this study, the importance, classification and description of the basic concepts Eliade deals with in his works and their positions in the history of religions are tried to be explained from Eliade's perspective by processing them in depth with all their realities.

Review: Climate Change, Religion, and Our Bodily Future, by Todd LeVasseur

Review: <i>Climate Change, Religion, and Our Bodily Future</i>, by Todd LeVasseur

James A. Palmer. The Virtues of Economy: Governance, Power, and Piety in Late Medieval Rome.

The world of fourteenth-century Rome is little known. In part, this is due to a dearth of evidence, but, as James A. Palmer emphasizes in his introduction to The Virtues of Economy: Governance, Power, and Piety in Late Medieval Rome, historians’ choices and priorities have also contributed to the lacuna. Historians of religion, politics, and culture have focused on papal Rome and used the papacy’s Avignon sojourn as a reason to ignore the city in its absence. Social historians have prioritized other Italian communes that are seen as less exceptional. Palmer argues that Rome’s exceptionality has been overemphasized and that in many ways it was a typical fourteenth-century Italian commune. He introduces a wide array of characters—barons, merchants, prostitutes, widows, guildsmen—and shows how they interwove spiritual and temporal concerns in their daily lives and in their plans for death. One of the many strengths of Palmer’s book is that he refuses to simplify these characters or to pigeonhole them into static roles. Similarly, his Rome resists easy categorization. It is not papal or baronial, religious or commercial, a city of natives or a city of immigrants; it is simultaneously all these cities and more.

Moral Economy: The Afterlife of a Nebulous Concept

Since the re-purposing of the concept of the moral economy by the British historian, E.P. Thompson in the late 1960s, scholars from a variety of disciplines in social sciences and humanities have attempted to apply it as a tool for empirical analysis. As a migratory concept, the meaning of 'moral economy' has shifted from theology to philosophy to anthropology and history. Scholars of religions and historians of religion, however, have shown a reluctance in deploying the concept in their field of study. A flexible and vintage concept such as the moral economy may seem to be an oxymoron when applied to the study of religion and religious reforms. Its utility, however, is demonstrated by a collection of four critical articles in this special issue of this journal to explore wide-ranging empirical materials and contexts. These include the contemporary analysis of religious morality and regulation in Northern Nigeria, the entanglements of Muslim-owned restaurants and Islamic morality in Mumbai (India), Zulu ethnic nationality and morality in the Nazareth Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), and finally, the pre-modern theoretical and philosophical reflections of the 14th-century Tunisian Muslim philosopher, Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun. In these diverse scenarios and contexts, the moral economy concept illustrates its theoretical and analytical capacity and potential in the field of the study of religions.

Mircea Eliade’s Unpublished Manuscripts from Private Collections III. Notebooks I &amp; II (Calcutta, 1929-1931). Commentary

The present series of contributions critically edits in Romanian and English, with concordances and commentary, a string of unpublished, multilingual manuscripts written by the young Mircea Eliade, Indologist, and historian of religions in South Asia, from 1929 to 1931. Previously unknown, the manuscripts were purchased by a private collector, who most graciously contacted the editors in February 2023 and bequeathed them for the present publication. The series complements ECCE | The Complete Critical Edition of Mircea Eliade’s Scholarly Works before 1945, under the auspices of the Institute for the History of Religions in Bucharest (first two volumes forthcoming). The first two instalments of MEUM | Mircea Eliade’s Unpublished Manuscripts from Private Collections were published in Transilvania 51 [155] (2023), no. 1, pp. 1-22 (Critical edition) and no. 2, pp. 1-16 (Concordances A-E).

Mircea Eliade’s Unpublished Manuscripts from Private Collections II. Notebooks I &amp; II (Calcutta, 1929-1931). Concordances A-E

The present series of contributions critically edits in Romanian and English, with concordances and commentary, a string of unpublished, multilingual manuscripts written by the young Mircea Eliade, Indologist and historian of religions in South Asia, from 1929 to 1931. Previously unknown, the manuscripts were purchased by a private collector, who most graciously contacted the editors in February 2023 and bequeathed them for the present publication. The series complements ECCE | The Complete Critical Edition of Mircea Eliade’s Scholarly Works before 1945, under the auspices of the Institute for the History of Religions in Bucharest (first two volumes forthcoming). The first (double) instalment was published in Transilvania 51 [155] (2023), no. 1, pp. 1-22.

Mircea Eliade’s Unpublished Manuscripts from Private Collections: Notebooks I &amp; II (Calcutta, 1929-1931). Critical edition

The present series of contributions critically edits in Romanian and English, with concordances and commentary, a string of unpublished, multilingual manuscripts written by the young Mircea Eliade, Indologist and historian of religions in South Asia, from 1929 to 1931. Previously unknown, the manuscripts were purchased by a private collector, who most graciously contacted the editors in February 2023 and bequeathed them for the present publication. The series complements ECCE | The Complete Critical Edition of Mircea Eliade’s Scholarly Works before 1945, under the auspices of the Institute for the History of Religions in Bucharest (first two volumes forthcoming).

Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion by Hugh B. Urban

Reviewed by: Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion by Hugh B. Urban Dmitry Galtsin hugh b. urban. Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2021. Pp. 264. Hugh Urban's book Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion was published in 2021, the result of decades-long interest in secrecy and religion, as well as the continuation of the author's studies in Indian Tantra, Western sex magic, and modern esoteric movements.1 Urban's book is focused on "secrecy as [End Page 464] power," and especially "the unique sort of power that religious claims to transcendent authority can wield" (2). The author intends to "theorize secrecy as a broader, cross-cultural, and comparative phenomenon in the history of religion," being preoccupied with "the mysterious workings of power and … the more this-worldly, historical, and material aspects of claims to hidden knowledge" (3). In Urban's view, "secrecy is better understood as a crucial part of the construction of religious authority itself and a fundamental element in both the maintenance and the dismantling of religious power in relation to broader social, political, and historical interests" (4). He claims to be engaged with "critical history of religion" (4), which can't help but bring to mind the basic Marxist approach, having at its core the strategy of unmasking religious claims by deconstructing them into elements, which point to the "material" (whatever is meant by the term) interests and processes, allegedly reflected in human consciousness as religion. The author explicitly speaks of the political implications of the method employed in his study: "The task of the critical history of religion in the twenty-first century is … at least twofold. Not only is our challenge to critically examine religion itself … it is also to examine the state (and now also the corporate) entities that surveil, regulate, censor, and in some cases criminalize religious groups, particularly those that stray outside the margins of 'legitimate' religiosity (particularly, Muslims, people of color, new or alternative religious movements, and those who express dissident political views)" (205). Urban criticizes, on one hand, those historians of religion who, admitting that secrecy is central for their field of study, nevertheless leave the study of secrecy "disappointedly vague, general, and theoretically undeveloped" (3), and on the other those who speak of the "decline in secrecy" following the French Revolution, industrialization, and disenchantment of the world (5–8). Urban views mature and late modernity as the time of "a tremendous new interest in secrecy, in the proliferation of secret societies, esoteric brotherhoods, occult movements, and in the mysteries of the exotic Orient" (5). At the same time, the end of this period in the second half of the twentieth century has seen an unprecedented rise in secrecy related to politics, especially in the United States, as reflected in the quote from David Cole: "Today, it is the citizenry that is increasingly transparent while government operations are shrouded in secrecy" (8). In order to examine secrecy as power, Urban analyzes several phenomena related to the sphere of esotericism and fringe religion, such as Freemasonry and Theosophy of the late nineteenth century, [End Page 465] sex magic of the first third of the twentieth century, the Nation of Islam of the second half of the twentieth century, white supremacy terrorist movements of the 1970s and 1980s, and Scientology of the late twentieth and twenty-first century. Secrecy is understood throughout the book as "a kind of strategy … for acquiring, enhancing, preserving, and/or protecting power" (10). The "power" here is, of course, Pierre Bourdieu's symbolic power, "a power, which the person submitting to grants to the person who exercises it, a credit which he credits his, a fides, an auctoritas … It is a power which exists because the person who submits to it believes that it exists" (10). Secrecy is thus a means of obtaining, preserving, and making symbolic capital: any information guarded by secrecy becomes valuable insofar as it becomes secret and thus contributes to the economy of secrets, the market of exoteric and occult ideas being part of this economy. As a strategy of dealing with symbolic capital, secrecy is subject to a complex dialectics of adornment and vestment...

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Charles H. Long the Liberationist: Context, Contact, and Meaning

Abstract Liberation theology confronts head-on the dominant systems and structures of power. It shakes the foundations of empire and hegemony, deconstructs the public narrative of silent subordination, and rejects the portrait of the citizen as suffering servant. The liberationist calls for changes that necessarily transcend the individual subject into the societal landscape. This paper argues that the historian of religion, Charles H. Long engages his scholarship with such liberative sensibilities. It suggests that the works of Long are better understood with this added liberatory lens. Accordingly, it suggests the incorporation of Long into the corpus of liberationist thinkers.

Review: Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults, directed by Clay Tweel; Heaven’s Gate, hosted by Glenn Washington; The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven’s Gate, a Diane Sawyer Special, produced by ABC 20/20

Review: <i>Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults</i>, directed by Clay Tweel; <i>Heaven’s Gate</i>, hosted by Glenn Washington; <i>The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven’s Gate, a Diane Sawyer Special</i>, produced by ABC 20/20

Concepts of the Divine and the Methodologies of its Venerations in World Religions

This article deals with, in a comprehensive and cogent a manner as is possible, the concepts of the divine and its multifarious modalities of its veneration in the eleven major historical religions of the world. These religions are Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity (Nestorian, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant), Islam, Hinduism (Vedic and Classical), Jainism, Buddhism (Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna), Sikhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Shinto.