Jesus and Addiction to Origins; Toward an Anthropocentric Study of Religion; Braun; McCutcheon

Author

Willi Braun [+–]

University of Alberta

Willi Braun is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and Classics and the Program in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the former President of the North American Association for the Study of Religion and also the past President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. Although a specialist in the writings and social formations of earliest Christianities in the Roman empire, his work also focuses on the methods and theories of the academic study of religion itself. He has published and presented his work widely and served as editor of a variety of books and journals, including his longtime role as editor of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion; most recently, he co-edited Reading J. Z. Smith: Interviews and Essay (Oxford, 2018).

Edited by

Russell T. McCutcheon [+–]

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).

With an Afterword by William E. Arnal, University of Regina

This collection of essays constitutes an extended argument for an anthropocentric, human-focused study of religious practices. Part I presents the basic premise of the argument, which is that there is nothing special or extraordinary about human behaviors and constructs that are claimed to have uniquely religious status and authority. Instead, they are fundamentally human, and so the scholar of religion is engaged in nothing more or less than studying humans across time and place in all their complex existence—which includes creating more-than-human beings and realities.

As an extended and detailed example of such an approach, Part II addresses practices, rhetoric, and other data in early Christianities within Greco-Roman cultures and religions. The underlying aim is to insert studies of the New Testament and non-canonical texts, most often presented as “biblical studies,” into the anthropocentric study of religion proposed in Part I. How might we approach the study of “sacred texts” if they are nothing more or less than human documents deriving from situations that were themselves all too human? Braun’s Jesus and Addiction to Origins addresses that question with clarity and insight.

Series: NAASR Working Papers

Preliminaries

Editor’s Foreword [+–] vii-ix

Russell T. McCutcheon

University of Alabama

McCutcheon introduces the volume and reflects on his friendship with Braun and Braun’s contributions to religious studies.

Preface [+–] xi-xii

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

Braun introduces the essays in this volume.

Sources [+–] xiii-xv

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

Acknowledgements of text int he volume which has been previously published.

I. Generalities

1. Religion: A Guide [+–] 3-16

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

The author’s introduction to the volume, it provides the initial outlines of a thorough-going anthropocentric study of religion—as a concept, as an aspect of human practices, and as a basis for an academic discipline—by offering a definition of religion as a kind of human talk that can be differentiated from other human talk by its topical content and its rhetorical propensity.

2. The Irony of Religion [+–] 17-25

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

Co-authored with William Arnal, this chapter further explores the basis for an anthropocentric study of religion by arguing that the category religion, as a framework for a non-theological, academic discipline is an ironic term inasmuch as it is most often defined precisely by its theological content (e.g., unique beliefs in the gods). The chapter therefore concludes that there is a futility in perpetual efforts to distinguish the study of religion from theology when theology is understood to set the terms in which the academic field operates.

3. Introducing Religion [+–] 26-38

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

This chapter poses the simple question: on what account is the study of religion to live another day in the academy of learning? The chapter does not lay out a full answer, but—recognizing the influence of Jonathan Z. Smith on the field—addresses the question of stance (or intellectual disposition, attitude and intellectual angle) that might inform how we formulate our answer.

II. Particularities

4. Jesus and Addiction to Origins [+–] 41-58

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

The history of the Christianity’s relationship to and evaluation of Jesus presents us with a useful case study for the place of “history” in Christian discourses about their past. The chapter argues that “history,” as understood in Christian thought, is an ambiguity that is often in an antagonistic tension with the documentary history that can threaten the imaginary artifice of “history.”

5. Christian Origins and the Gospel of Mark: Fragments of a Story [+–] 59-75

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

The dominant default in the academic that studies the formation and history of emergent Christianity is the assumption of the mystique of its first-century origins—even if those studies are, ostensibly, non-theological. Christianity’s own myth of origins has therefore become the universal scholarly starting point in understanding Christian beginnings. This chapter uses one literary example, the Gospel of Mark, to see if the text can bear the burden of the Christian myth of origin that is often placed upon it.

6. The Sayings Gospel Q and the Making of an Early Jesus Group [+–] 76-97

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

Keeping in mind the methodological thicket that surrounds the project of redescribing early Christianities, this chapter represents an initial stalking exercise to consider the conceptual and methodological issues when scholars understand Greco-Roman “schools” as arenas of socio-mythic formation, in order to see how the focus on “school” might help us to qualify the categories of mythmaking and social formation when it comes to understanding the Q document and the early communities that may have produced it.

7. In the Beginning was not the Word [+–] 98-120

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

This chapter ambiguates the object defined as “rhetoric” in order to examine scholars’ temptation to understand the persuasion (and thus spread) of early Graeco-Roman Christianities as merely the effect of compelling ideas. Using first the ancient theorist, Gorgias of Leontini, and then the work of a modern one, Harvey Whitehouse, it inspects that common model by proposing rhetoric and persuasion as far more dynamic and complex items.

8. Sex, Gender and Empire: Virgins and Eunuchs in the Ancient Mediterranean World [+–] 121-140

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

In light of the anti-familial figure of the eunuch-priest and the vestal virgin (both spectacular investments in celibacy), this chapter argues that the oft-supposed centrality and stability of “the family” in Greco-Roman antiquity belongs as much to the realm of ancient and modern desire and mythmaking than to historical reality.

9. Physiotherapy of Femininity in Early Christianity: Ideology and Practice [+–] 141-164

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

For the purpose of provoking historiographical thought and meditation on early Christian liberationist rhetoric, this chapter asks if some modern feminists’ claims to have found in the cracks and beneath the early Christian textual corpus moments of women’s liberation is, in the final analysis, not wishful thinking and thus a discovery that is not historical as much as mythographical, grounded in a desire for authoritative and authorizing precedents, for foremothers to contemporary women’s struggles.

10. “Our Religion Compels us to make a Distinction”: Prolegomena on Meals and Social Formation [+–] 165-178

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

Inspired by the possibilities suggested by Claude Grignon, this chapter suggests that scholars pay attention to commensal groups in antiquity, but asking not what people did at meals (though that too, of course), but what they did with meals and food. This seemingly small but significant shift in scholarly focus will lend detail, specificity, and conceptual robustness to our work and help us to close in on the differences in nuance and focus of early Christian commensal practices.

III. Afterword

Reification, Religion and the Relics of the Past [+–] 181-188

William E. Arnal

University of Regina

William E. Arnal is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Regina.

Placing Willi Braun’s work in a longstanding intellectual tradition that extends back at least to Ludwig Feuerbach, William E. Arnal offers concluding thoughts on how this tradition can assist scholars to resist the reifying tendencies that continue to characterize not just the study of early Christianity but also the academic study of religion as a whole.

End Matter

Index [+–] 189-198

Willi Braun

University of Alberta

With an Afterword by William E. Arnal, University of Regina This collection of essays constitute an extended argument for an anthropocentric, human-focused, study of religious practices. The basic premise of the argument, offered in the opening section, is that there is nothing special or extraordinary about human behaviors and constructs that are claimed to have uniquely religious status and authority. Instead, they are fundamentally human and so the scholar of religion is engaged in nothing more or less than studying humans across time and place and all their complex existence—that includes creating more-than-human beings and realities. As an extended and detailed example of such an approach, the second part of the book contains essays that address practices, rhetoric and other data in early Christianities within Greco-Roman cultures and religions. The underlying aim is to insert studies of the New Testament and non-canonical texts, most often presented as “biblical studies,” into the anthropocentric study of religion proposed in the opening section. For a general reading of modern biblical scholarship makes clear the assumption that the Christian bible is a “sacred text” whose principal raison d’être is to stand, fetish-like, as the foundational and highest authority in matters moral, ritual or theological; how might we instead approach the study of these texts if they are nothing more or less than human documents deriving from situations that were themselves all too human? Braun’s Jesus and Addiction to Origins seeks to answer just that question—doing so in a way that readers working outside Christian origins will undoubtedly find useful applications for the people, places, and historical periods that they study.

Reviews

Author interview: "Comparing Methods in Christian Origins", Religious Studies Podcast, April 19, 2021

If the juxtaposition of ‘Jesus’ and ‘Origins’ suggests a re-run of New Testament biblical studies, think again. Braun is different, starting in a different place, with a different agenda, and offering fresh insight rather than traditional info, highlighting hazards and warnings rather than contentedly re-affirming the familiar. His laudable objective is to explore Religion as a normal human and universal experience in a purely secular, humanistic, scientific way, independent of specific religions (faiths, beliefs, or creeds), to take it off its pedestal and nurture its roots.
The Baptist Times

The purpose of this collection of essays is to show that the performances usually presented as religious are, in fact, human productions. The volume argues for an anthropocentric, human-focused study of religious practices. The result is a provocative and challenging proposal for anyone engaged in studying religion, but especially those concerned about ancient Christian rhetoric and practices.

Several characteristics make this volume an interesting project. First, it aims at presenting a clear anthropological approach to the study of religion, especially through the specific site of early Christianities within the larger Greek and Roman cultures and religions. Second, it demonstrates the possibility of studying the New Testament and other texts related to early Christianities in a thorough and sophisticated manner using tools both from sociology and anthropology.
Reading Religion

The benefit of this volume is that it provides a series of introductions to a variety of different topics in early Christianity and, as such, presents the student of early Christianity with a number of tools, by which they can understand their subject in a way that places human action at the forefront.
Religion

This book is a cogently argued work regarding the two main points I expressed as its twin assertions/projects. It presents concrete case studies to support its main points from Braun’s field of specialization (New Testament/Christian origins, although both terms are rightly problematized in the work). I learned a lot and updated my knowledge in significant ways, and I am in similar fields as Braun. This is to say, this work will be a valuable tool primarily for people in the field of religious studies who are situated in a secular context and/or who are trying to figure out the nature of religious studies as a discipline in the secular academy and how it is to be distinguished from theology. I may not recommend it to undergraduates, who are “uninitiated” unless they have a guide to walk them through the work’s more intricate points. But those with the requisite background who engage with it will find the work an informative, insightful, fascinating, and engrossing read.
Review of Biblical Literature

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Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Jesus and Addiction to Origins

Toward an Anthropocentric Study of Religion

Willi Braun [+–]

University of Alberta

Russell T. McCutcheon [+–]

University of Alabama

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