Edited by

Panayotis Pachis [+–]

Aristotle University

Panayotis Pachis is Professor of Religious Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His publications include Religion and Politics in the Graeco-Roman World: Redescribing the Isis-Sarapis Cult (Barbounakis, 2010) and many articles on the Graeco-Roman religions and the cognitive study of religion. He is also the author of five books in Greek and co-editor of four volumes, most recently Chasing Down Religion: In the Sights of History and the Cognitive Sciences (with Donald Wiebe; Equinox, 2014).

Donald Wiebe [+–]

University of Toronto

Donald Wiebe is Professor of Philosophy of Religion in Trinity College at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Religion and Truth: Towards and Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion (De Gruyter, 1981), The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), Beyond Legitimation: Essays on the Problem of Religious Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 1994), The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) and The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Whether as a historian finding solutions to unresolved problems or as a scientist finding the causes for events and actions, Luther Martin’s primary focus has been to get to the roots of the religious impulse in human existence. This collection of essays from scholars of his own generation and from his best students cover the three major strands of his work: the Greco-Roman world, cognitive science approaches to explaining religious phenomena and methodological issues in the academic study of religions. The contributions build on the work of Luther Martin and further the ongoing discussion and debate within these areas of religious studies.

Preliminaries

Contents [+–] IX-XI

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

The essays focus on three major areas – the Greco-Roman world, cognitive science approaches to explaining religious phenomena and methodological issues in the academic study of religions. These are dedicated to Luther Martin, University of Vermont, in recognition of his contributions to the academic study of religion.

Contributors [+–] XIII-XXI

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

Abbreviations [+–] XXIII-XXIV

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

Luther H. Martin Publications [+–] XXV-XLV

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

Preface [+–] XLVII-XLIX

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

Chapter 1

Ancient and Modern Approaches to the Representation of Supernatural Beings: Dio Chrysostom (Oration 12) and Dan Sperber (Explaining Culture) Compared [+–] 1-9

Roger Beck £17.50

University of Toronto

Roger Beck, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Toronto, is among the world’s foremost authorities on such ancient Roman mystery cults as Mithraism.

In Oration 12, composed for the Olympic games of 97, 101 or 105 CE, Dio Chrysostom treats religion in terms of the formation and transmission of representations, both private or mental and public. His approach is in ways analogous to modern cognitivist approaches, especially to Dan Sperber’s theory of religions as ‘epidemics’ of mental and public representations. Dio also anticipates (as do other ancient sources) the modern cognitivist premise of the naturalness of religion: that is, the assumption that the representation of supernatural beings is a normal function of the human mind/brain to be studied and explained as such.

Chapter 2

Gnosis in European Religious History [+–] 11-40

Ulrich Berner £17.50

University of Bayreuth, Germany

BERNER ULRICH is Professor of Religious Studies at the
University of Bayreuth, Germany, faculty of cultural sciences. His main
interests are European History of Religions, African Christianity, and
Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. He is a member of the
Advisory Board for SAPERE (Scripta Antiquitatis Posterioris ad
Ethicam Religionemque pertinentia).

The Gnosis-Concept as Problematic. A Look at the Research-History Gnosis as it appears in the European history of religions is more difficult to delineate than, for example, Neoplatonism or pantheism. For the concept of Gnosis has evoked completely different meanings over the last decades.

Chapter 3

The First Shall be Last: The Gospel of Mark after the First Century [+–] 41-57

Willi Braun £17.50

Department of History and
Classics/Program of Religious Studies and Director of the Program of
Religious Studies Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

BRAUN WILLI is Professor at the Department of History and
Classics/Program of Religious Studies and Director of the Program of
Religious Studies Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada. He is the author of Feasting and Social Rhetoric in
Luke 14 (2005[1995]). He is the editor of Rhetoric and Reality in
Early Christianities (2005). He is co-editor with R. McCutcheon of
Guide to the Study of Religion (2000) and also Introducing Religion:
Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith (2008). He is the author of
numerous articles on the above topics.

Despite enormous labours over more than a century on pin-pointing the geographical and social setting for the originary composition of the Gospel of Mark, what John Donahue concluded twelve years ago is still the case: “there is no consensus on the setting of Mark, nor is there a method agreed upon for describing the social make up of a community on the basis of the text”. Professor Braun discusses the evidence and attempts which have been made to locate the Gospel of Mark in time and place.

Chapter 4

Comparative Religion Scholars in Debate: Theology vs. History in Letters Addressed to Ugo Bianchi [+–] 58-80

Giovanni Casadio £17.50

University of Salerno

CASADIO GIOVANNI is Professor Ordinarius of History of
Religions at the University of Salerno. Past member of the executive
committee of the European Association for the Study of religions
(EASR) as Publications officer. Member of the editorial board of the
second edition of Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion. Member of the
advisory board of several international series and journals (including
Archaeus and Vergilius). 109 publications on ancient Mediterranean
religions and religious historiography. Books: Storia del culto di Dioniso
XIV in Argolide (1994), Vie gnostiche all’ immortalità (1997), Il vino dell’ anima (1999), Ugo Bianchi: Una vita per la storia delle religioni (ed. 2002).

This chapter discusses the comparative-historical method, which is to develop comparisons between religious phenomena (comparative) while accounting for their developments within particular contexts through time and space (historical). Ugo Bianchi, an Italian Historian (1922-1995) said that ‘The notion of religion that emerges from the continued comparison of new and varied historical materials is an analogical notion.’ This chapter focusses on correspondence between Bianchi and two prominent American scholars of religion.

Chapter 5

Why did the Greeks and Romans Pray Aloud? Anthropomorphism, ‘Dumb Gods’ and Human Cognition [+–] 81-95

Aleš Chalupa £17.50

Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.

CHALUPA ALEŠ is Assistant Professor at the Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. His field of research is ancient religions, especially Roman religion, Graeco-Roman magic and Mithraism. In recent years, he has also focused on the cognitive science of religion and its possible contribution to the methodology of the study of ancient religious traditions.

Aleš Chalupa discusses the reasons why Greeks and Romans prayed ‘out loud’ and goes on to discuss how silent prayer may have developed.

Chapter 6

Reflections on the Origins of Religious Thought and Behaviour [+–] 97-114

Armin W. Geertz £17.50

Aarhus University

Armin W. Geertz is Emeritus Professor in the History of Religions at the Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is editor of the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion and Advances in the Cognitive Science of Religion at Equinox. His interests and publications include the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary theory, psychology of religion, neuropsychology of religious experiences, ritual embodiment, method and theory in the study of religion, contemporary spirituality, and the religions of indigenous peoples. He recently co-authored The Emergence and Evolution of Religion: By Means of Natural Selection (Routledge 2018) together with Jonathan H. Turner, Alexandra Maryanski, and Anders Klostergaard Petersen.

Armin Geertz discusses the development of religion by considering cognition, culture and evolution.

Chapter 7

Why is it Better to be a Plant Than an Animal? Cognitive Poetics and Ascetic Ideals in the Book of Thomas the Contender (NHC II,7) [+–] 115-133

Ingvild Sælid Gilhus £17.50

University of Bergen

GILHUS INGVILD SÆLID is Professor in the history of religions at the University of Bergen (1988-). Research interests: late antiquity and Gnosticism, new religious movements, and theories and methods in the history of religions. Vice Dean (1988) and Dean of the Faculty of
Arts, University of Bergen (1989-90) and member of the board of the
Norwegian Research Council for Social Sciences and Humanities
(1993-96). Member of the board of the University of Bergen (1999-),
Deputy Chairman of the board of the Norwegian Research Council
(2003-), Chairman of the board of Chr. Michelsen Institute.
Development Studies and Human Rights (2001-), member of the board
of the Bergen Festival (1999-) and member of the Executive Commitee
IAHR (1999-2004). Deputy General Secretary of the Executive
Committee IAHR (2005-2010). Member of the the Royal Norwegian
Society of Sciences and Letters in Trondheim and of the Norwegian
Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo.

Through questions and answers and eventually a monologue the resurrected Christ teaches Thomas his secret message. In this chapter Ingvild Gilhus discusses the positive and negative metaphors in the tractate.

Chapter 8

Miracles Memory and Meaning: a Cognitive Approach to Roman Myths [+–] 135-150

Alison B. Griffith £17.50

University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand

GRIFFITH B. ALISON is a senior Lecturer at the University of
Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand and the chief editor of the
Electronic Journal of Mithraic Studies. She is the author of numerous
articles on the worship of Mithras in Rome and also on Roman religion
and its alternatives.

Alison Griffith considers a number of Roman myths about miraculous events. Looking at a number of different historical recollections Griffith explains why counter-intuitive event become structurally integral to myths.

Chapter 9

‘Whatever Story Sings, the Arena Displays for You’ Performance, Narrative and Myth in Græco-Roman Discourse [+–] 151-169

Gerhard Van Den Heever £17.50

University of South Africa

Gerhard van den Heever has been a full professor at the University of South Africa, since 2012, after a long career as senior lecturer and associate professor, as well as a short stint as minister in a church. He teaches courses in New Testament and Early Christian Studies. His research focuses on the Gospel of John in its Graeco-Roman context, Greek and Roman religions–especially the transformations in religious formations from the classical to the Late Antique period, history of religion, and contemporary theory of religion. He is currently editing a collection of essays, After Religion, which deals with theorizing historiography of religion in Antiquity. Current projects include an international colloquium on Mapping Transformations towards a Christian Late Antiquity, as well as a publication of essays on Twilights of Greek and Roman Religions.

Gerhard van den Heever is interested in the ‘inter-space’ between the spectacle and the text.

Chapter 10

Religion and Violence a Psychoanalytical Inquiry [+–] 171-196

Marsha Aileen Hewitt £17.50

Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto

HEWITT AILEEN MARSHA is Professor of Ethics and
Contemporary Theology in the Faculty of Divinity, and cross-appointed
to the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto.
She also teaches in the Arts Faculty, where she is the co-ordinator of
Ethics, Society and the Law, a Trinity College undergraduate Arts
programme. Professor Hewitt is the author of several articles and books
in the areas of ethics, critical social theory, feminism and liberation
theology. She is also a practising psychoanalyst.

Marsha Hewitt considers psychoanalytical explanations of the mental states present in enactments of religious violence.

Chapter 11

Disciplinary Clans [+–] 197-214

Steven Hrotic £17.50

Steven Hrotic primary interests concern universal patterns of human behavior as rooted in our evolutionarily constrained cognition. This has led him to study primate behavior, religion, and implicit cultural schema. Following a year of fieldwork, his current research investigates how academic thought and practice, idealized as perfectly objective and impersonal, may nevertheless reflect biases based in our biological heritage.

Academic disciplines are commonsensically defined as a ‘data set’ – a subset of the facts, theories, and methods that constitute academic knowledge. However, this view cannot alone account for the boundaries between disciplines, nor disciplines’ characters. Hrotic suggests that disciplines are quasi-social networks. Interactions within academic alliances result in discipline-specific cultural schema, which are used to identify ‘social’ group members. This plays a beneficial functional role by organizing academia into coherent ‘clans’. Disciplines are not imposed by academic leadership, but are an emergent property of academia as a self-organizing system. The Religion department at the University of Vermont is presented as an example.

Chapter 12

The Social Capital of Religious Communities in the Age of Globalisation [+–] 215-232

Hans Kippenberg £17.50

Fellow of the Max-Weber Kolleg, Erfurt

KIPPENBERG G. HANS was chair for theory and history of religions at the University of Bremen from 1989 to 2004. Since 1998 he has been a fellow of the Max-Weber Kolleg, Erfurt. He served as editor of NUMEN: International Review for the History of Religions from 1989 to 2000. He published Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age (2002) and was in charge of a critical edition of Max Weber’s section on «Religion» in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, published uncer the authentic title Religiöse Gemeinschaften in 2001. Together with Martin Riesebrodt, he edited the volume Webers «Religious systemetik» (2001). In 2006, together with Tilman Seidensticker, he published The 9/11 Handbook: Annotated Translated and Interpretation of the Attackers’ Spiritual Manual. His book Gewalt als Gottesdienst: Religionskriege der Globalisiering appeared in 2008.

Hans Kippenberg considers the way in which Religious Communities are formed today in comparison with their historical development.

Chapter 13

Towards a Cognitive Historiography – Frequently Posed Objections [+–] 233-242

Anders Lisdorf £17.50

This Chapter aims to collect, in one place, the objections to and arguments for a cognitive historiography.

Chapter 14

How Science and Religion are more like Theology and Commonsense Explanations than they are like each other: A Cognitive Account [+–] 243-265

Robert N. McCauley £17.50

Emory University

McCAULEY N. ROBERT, William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor, Director, Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture, Emory University. His research focuses on philosophy of science (especially philosophy of psychology), cognitive science of religion, naturalized epistemology. Selected Publications: Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (Cambridge 1990) and Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms (Cambridge 2002), both with E. Thomas Lawson. Editor of The Churchlands and Their Critics (Blackwell 1996). Research articles in Philosophy of Science, Synthese, Philosophical Psychology, Consciousness and Cognition, Theory and Psychology, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and History of Religions. Fellowships and Honors: grants or fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, British Academy, National Endowment for the Humanities, Lilly Endowment, American Academy of Religion, Templeton Foundation, and Council for Philosophical Studies; Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, 1996; Massée-Martin/NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor (1994-1998, inaugural appointment);
President, Society for Philosophy and Psychology (1997-1998).

This Chapter initially considers standard comparisons of science and religion. Robert McCauley then goes on to delineate two cognitive criteria for comparing science, religion, theology and commonsense explanations.

Chapter 15

The Transmission of Historical Cognition [+–] 267-283

William McCorkle £17.50

Masaryk University

William (Lee) W. McCorkle Jr., is Senior Research Fellow at Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion and Ritual, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, and Managing Editor, Journal of Cognitive Historiography.

William McCorkle argues that history is a dialectical process that takes place both in vertical (generation to generation) and horizontal (peer to peer, culture to culture) space.

Chapter 16

Religion Before ‘Religion’? [+–] 285-301

Russell T. McCutcheon £17.50

University of Alabama

Russell T. McCutcheon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. His major publications include Manufacutring Religion (Oxford University Press, 1997), The Guide to the Study of Religion (Bloomsbury, 2000), Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (State University of New York Press, 2001) and The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (Routledge, 2003).

A discussion of Religion past and present.

Chapter 17

The Discourse of a Myth: Diodorus Siculus and the Egyptian Theologoumena During the Hellenistic Age [+–] 303-336

Panayotis Pachis £17.50

Aristotle University

This Chapter deals with the idea of Euhemerus, a writer of the Hellenistic period, whose theoretical views challenge Diodorus Siculus’ approach to the mythical world of Egypt and, through these ideas, the religio-political reality of that translation period.

Chapter 18

The History of Religions and Evolutionary Models: Some Reflections on Framing a Mediating Vocabulary [+–] 337-350

William Paden £17.50

University of Vermont

PADEN E. WILLIAM has been a member of the Department of Religion, University of Vermont from 1965 until his retirement in the Spring of 2009. He served as Chair from 1972-78 and 1990-2005. He has been a visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford (1999, 1992), and spent time as a research fellow and lecturer in Japan (1999, 1992). Publications include the books, Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion (Beacon Press, 1988; 21994), and Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion (Beacon Press, 1992; 22003), both translated in numerous foreign language editions.

William Paden considers the history of religious tradition, and its body of evidences of panhuman thematics, and tries to find ways of modelling consilience with evolutionary ideas.

Chapter 19

Religion and Modern Culture [+–] 351-372

Petrou Ioannis £17.50

School of Theology and Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

PETROU IOANNIS is Professor of Sociology and Ethics in the School of Theology and Chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has participated in two European Programmes: “European Identity, Welfare State, Religion”, as scientific supervisor of the Greek Research Group, and “Material/Module for the Training of Specialized Executives in the Approach of Problems of Intercultural Communi-cation in the Field of Local Community (Neighborhood/Muni-cipality/Prefecture)”, as coordinator. He was a member of the European Commission Think Tank in the area of European Cultural Dimension. He is a member of the Environmental Committee of the Aristotle University as well as of the interdisciplinary network “Medical Practice and Law” and of the Bioethics Association. His recent books are: Multiculturality and religious freedom (2005), Social Theory and Modern Culture (2005), Sociology (2007) (in Greek).

Petrou Ioannis looks at understanding the role of religion in the context of the modern world and the developments and questions raised in the field of the scientific study of religion. The analysis starts by making reference to basic data of modern culture and their implications for religion.

Chapter 20

Do Relics Do? Making a Comparative Place for ‘Presence’ in the Comparative Study of Relics [+–] 373-390

Douglas Robinson £17.50

ROBINSON DOUGLAS is a former student and teaching assistant of Luther Martin at the University of Vermont where he graduaded Phi Beta Kappa with honors in Religion in 2009. Douglas’s research on method and theory and relics has resulted in numerous undergraduate conference presentations and grant funding. His honors thesis was entitled Strategies of Ritual Presences: Relics in Cross-Cultural
Perspective.

Douglas Robinson discusses the history of relics primarily within the studies of Christianity and Buddhism. He also considers the evolutionary psychology of relics.

Chapter 21

Mithras in the Magical Papyri Religio-Historical Reflections on Various Magical Texts [+–] 391-406

Ennio Sanzi £17.50

SANZI ENNIO (Roma 1965), under the guidance of Ugo Bianchi, studied History of Religions at University of Rome «La Sapienza», graduating in 1991 with the thesis Giove di Doliche. Dimensione sociale di organizzazione cultuale. He recieved his PhD degree in 1997 with the thesis, Soteriologia, escatologia e cosmologia nel culto di Mithra, di Iside e Osiride, e di Iuppiter Dolichenus. Osservazioni storico-comparative under the guidance of Ugo Bianchi and Giulia Sfameni Gasparro. He has also published Misteri, Soteriologia, Dualismo. Ricerche storico-religiose (Roma 1995), I culti orientali nell’ Impero romano. Un’ antologia di fonti (Cosenza, 2003), Cultos orientais e Magia no mundo elenístico romano. Modelos e perspectivas metodológicas (Fortaleza, 2006), with Carla Sfameni, Magia e Culti orientali. Per la storia religiosa della Tarda Antichità (Cosenza 2009), and several articles on the religious phenomena of the «Second Hellenism» under the title Oriental Cults and Magic. He has taught at the University of Messina and is working on Coptic sources for the fields of research mentioned above.

During the ‘Second Hellenism’ theologians and magicians accumulated the names of deities from different panthea in order to indicate the multiple powers of divinity, the same divinity that is analyzed by the great philosophers of this epoch. Ennio Sanzi analyzes different texts of the time.

Chapter 22

The Use of Egyptian Tradition in Alexandria of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: Self-Display and Identity of Rulers, Ideology and Further Political Propaganda [+–] 407-429

Kyriakos Savvopoulos £17.50

Alexandria Center for Hellenistic Studies

SAVVOPOULOS KYRIAKOS is Lecturer of archaeology and history at the Alexandria Center for Hellenistic Studies and research fellow at the Alexandria and the Mediterranean Research Center of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. He received his PhD from the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University (2009). His thesis concerns the contribution of the Egyptian tradition in culture, identity and public life of Alexandria in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as an attempt to give a better understanding in Graeco-Egyptian interaction.

Egyptian elements of religious character can be found in several types of material evidence, such as coinage, monumental art and architecture. All these types of material are related, in multiple ways, to the public life in Alexandria’s multicultural society, throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods. For the sake of a thorough insight into the material evidence, the discussion will be divided in the following three chronological subperiods: 1. The early Ptolemaic period (Ptolemy I- Ptolemy V) 2. The Late Ptolemaic period (Ptolemy V- Cleopatra VII) 3. The Roman period (From Augustus to the end of the 3rd century AD/ beginning of the 4rth century AD)

Chapter 23

Buddhist Hymns and Medieval Plainsong: Some Reflections on the Links Between Neuroscience, Music and Religion [+–] 431-458

Kevin Trainor,Anne Clark £17.50

University of Vermont

TRAINOR KEVIN specializes in South Asian religious traditions. His area of research includes Theravada Buddhist traditions, especially Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Other research interests include gender analysis and ritual studies. He completed an M. Div. degree in Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a Ph.D. in Religion at Columbia University; his B.A. in Religion is from Colgate University. His publications include: Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia, edited with David Germano (SUNY Press, 2004), Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide (Oxford University Press, 2004), Relics, Ritual , and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravada Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1997), “Constructing a Buddhist Ritual Site: Stupa and Monastery Architecture”, in Unseen Presence: The Buddha and Sanchi , edited by Vidya Dehejia (Marg Publications, 1996), “In the Eye of the Beholder: Nonattachment and the Body in Subha’s Verse (Therigatha 71)”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61 (1993): 57-79, and “When Is a Theft Not a Theft? Relic Theft and the Cult of the Buddha’s Relics in Sri Lanka”, Numen 39, (1992): 1-26.

University of Vermont

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CLARK ANNΕ works on the Christian tradition in the Middle Ages. Her Ph.D. is from Columbia University. Her research focuses on styles of piety, questions of gender, the role of the body, and women’s religious life. She has published Elisabeth of Schönau: The Complete Works (Paulist Press, 2000) and Elisabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). She has also published articles on Elisabeth of Schönau, Hildegard of Bingen, Gertrude of Helfta, women’s monastic communities, and cognitive theory in the study of religion. Her current research is on the cult of the Virgin Mary in the later Middle Ages.

A number of studies have emerged in the last few years examining musical cognition from a neuroscience perspective. However there has been less attention on music, neuroscience and religion. This chapter discusses some of the new research that is starting to look at this field of study.

Chapter 24

Citations of Biblical Texts in Greek, Jewish and Christian Inscriptions of Late Antiquity: A Case of Religious Demarcation [+–] 459-478

Ekaterina Tsalampouni £17.50

School of Pastoral and Social Theology, Faculty of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

TSALAMPOUNI EKATERINI is a Lecturer in the New Testament, School of Pastoral and Social Theology, Faculty of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She obtained her PhD in 1999 at the Faculty of Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Title: “Macedonia in the New Testament era”. She teaches courses on NT exegesis and theology and the Greco-Roman world and the NT. Research interests: Greco-Roman world and the New Testament, Greco-Roman epigraphy and early Christianity. Member of EABS and SBL.

The purpose of this short study is twofold: first, to provide a systematic presentation of the geographical and chronological diffusion of ancient Christian and Jewish epigraphic texts, of their contexts and of the Biblical books and passages they mostly quote; secondly, by comparing the Jewish and Christian epigraphic evidence and placing it within its broader socio-historical and religious context to discuss a particular aspect of it, namely that in some cases the use of these Biblical quotations served as religious demarcation of individuals or communities.

Chapter 25

Memorable Religions: Transmission, Codification, and Change in Divergent Melanesian Contexts [+–] 479-510

Harvey Whitehouse £17.50

Magdalen College, University of Oxford

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Harvey Whitehouse is a Professor in Anthropology at Magdalen College, University of Oxford.

A re-publication of a paper on the rites of initiation and cargo cult activities in twentieth-century New Guinea. This points to some of the fundamental recurrent features of the way organised religion the world over, and stretching back into the distant past, is codified, transmitted, and remembered, as well as the structure, cohesion, and scale of resulting coalitions.

Chapter 26

Recovering ‘Religious Experience’ in the Explanation of Religion [+–] 511-530

Donald Wiebe £17.50

University of Toronto

Donald Wiebe has two aims in this essay. First to provide an account of the emergence and development of that theory from two methodological innovations Lewis-Williams brought to the field of rock art studies that not only made possible a more sophisticated interpretation of the artistic creations of the San (and our more distant forebears), but also revealed the essential character of their art as expressions of the religious beliefs they held. He will then show how those beliefs are intimately tied to what we commonly conceive of as “religious experience”.

Chapter 27

Can the Study of Religion be Scientific? [+–] 531-549

Dimitris Xygalatas £17.50

University of Connecticut, United States, and Aarhus University, Denmark

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Dimitris Xygalatas holds a joint position between the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, where he is directing the Experimental Anthropology Lab. He has previously held positions at the universities of Princeton and Masaryk, where he served as Director of the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion. His main areas of interest are experimental anthropology and the experimental study of religion, and much of his work has focused on the practice of extreme rituals around the world. He has conducted several years of ethnographic research in Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, and Mauritius and has pioneered new methods, integrating ethnographic and experimental approaches in field research.

Dimitris Xygalatas looks at the emerging field of the Cognitive Study of Religion, which attempts to bridge the gap between the study of religion and the natural sciences by shifting the focus from mere description and interpretation to more explanatory, test-able models of religious behaviour.

Bibliography

General Bibliography [+–] 551-617

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

Indexes

Index of Authors [+–] 619-620

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

Index of Writers [+–] 621-626

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

General Index [+–] 627-657

Panayotis Pachis FREE

Aristotle University

Reviews

An antidote to the conventional handling of religion and a prolegomenon to any future religious studies.
Anthropology Review Database

While the academic tradition from which this book emerges has, at times, been at odds with and even antagonistic to, the broad-umbrella approach to religious studies which is inclusive of theology and philosophy of religion by keeping a much narrower focus on the study of religion and restricting it only to those empirical social sciences, Chasing Down Religion demonstrates that even from within that much narrower focus a wide offering of very eclectic—some quite speculative and theoretical—essays can be merged within one volume. Truly there is something for everyone in this assemblage even though it keeps its commitment to historiography, and the cognitive sciences. In Chasing Down Religion, editors Panayotis Pachis and Donald Wiebe extend a surprisingly varied, multidisciplinary-methodological lens upon religion and its study, and in its own way, this volume mediates some of the tensions found more broadly within academic studies of religion, most particularly the reductionist (science) vs non-reductionist (humanities) tension. How so? By adding the human touch.
Reading Religion