Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth

Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-43501-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 16, 394 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 727 g

Reihe: Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion

In Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth: Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal, nineteen renowned scholars offer a collection of essays addressing the persisting question of how to approach religion and myth as academic categories. Taking their cue from the work of Robert A. Segal, they discuss how to theorize about religion and myth from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. With cases from ancient Greece and Mesopotamia to East Asia and the modern world by and large, and engaging with diverse disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, history, film, theology, and religious studies among others, the volume establishes a synthesis that demonstrates the pervasiveness as well as the pitfalls of the categories “religion” and “myth” in the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

P Roubekas, Nickolas

Ryba, Thomas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Editors’ Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Toward a Segalian Religiology
Thomas Ryba

Debating Religion

1 Reductionism in Retrospect: Assessing Robert Segal’s “In Defense of Reductionism” (1983) Almost Four Decades On
Daniel L. Pals

2 Understanding Religion: Interpretation and Explanation
Douglas Allen

3 Robert Segal: Philosopher of Religion, or: Ye’ll huvtae furgi’e oor Robert. He disnae ken his ane strength
Bryan S. Rennie

History, Theory, and Religion

4 Presocratic Theories of Religion
Nickolas P. Roubekas

5 An Episode in the History of the “Science of Religion”: C. P. Tiele’s Indecisive Scientific Practice
Ivan Strenski

6 Many-Titled One; Elephant and Blind Men; Hand and Fingers: Classic Metaphors of Religious Pluralism
Eric Ziolkowski

Reapproaching Religion

7 Re-visioning Religious Archetypes: Cognitive Schemas and Material Anchors in Biblical Criticism
Dexter E. Callender, Jr.

8 The Permeable Boundary between Christian Anti-Judaism and Secular Antisemitism
Henry L. Munson, Jr.

9 Experience and Ontology in the Study of Religion
Fiona Bowie

Debating Myth

10 Theory of Myth versus Meta-Theory of Myth: on the Political Implications of a Late Twentieth-Century Distinction
Angus Nicholls

11 Deconstructing Myth
Jon Mills

12 Myth, Synchronicity, and the Physical World
Roderick Main
Interrogating Myth

13 Mythic Aetiologies of Loss
William Hansen

14 Fictioning Myths and Mythic Fictions: the Standard-Babylonian Gilgameš Epic and Questions of Heroism, Myth, and Fiction
Laura Feldt

15 The Millenarian Myth Ethnocentrized: the Case of East Asian New Religious Movements
Lukas Pokorny

Myth Revisited

16 Métaphysique noire: the Dybbuk Myth and the Book of Job as Mythological Subtexts in the Coen Brothers’ Film A Serious Man
Steven F. Walker

17 Jung’s “Very Twentieth-Century” View of Mind: Implications for Theorizing about Myth
Raya A. Jones

18 Cultural Mythcriticism and Today’s Challenges to Myth
José Manuel Losada

Annex: Bibliography of Robert A. Segal, 1976–2019

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Nickolas P. Roubekas, Ph.D. (Aristotle University, 2011), is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Vienna. He specializes in theories of religion and the Graeco-Roman world and has more recently edited Theorizing “Religion” in Antiquity (Equinox, 2019).



Thomas Ryba, Ph.D. (Northwestern University, 1986), is Notre Dame Theologian for the Aquinas Educational Foundation/Purdue and Senior Lecturer and Director of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Purdue University. He has published numerous books and articles on religion, theology, and related subjects.

Contributors are:

Douglas Allen, Fiona Bowie, Dexter E. Callender, Jr., Laura Feldt, José Manuel Losada, William Hansen, Raya A. Jones, Roderick Main, Jon Mills, Henry Munson, Angus Nicholls, Daniel L. Pals, Lukas Pokorny, Bryan S. Rennie, Ivan Strenski, Steven F. Walker, Eric Ziolkowski, Nickolas P. Roubekas, Thomas Ryba.