Worth More than Many Sparrows

Sarah E. Rollens, Patrick Hart

When it comes to the study of religion, Willi Braun is a paragon of what a methodologically rigorous and epistemologically modest academic ought to look like. Braun's career began in the 1990s, when he studied among a cadre of other notable graduate students at the Centre for the Study of Religion a...

The Complexity of Conversion

Valerie Nicolet, Marianne Kartzow

Today, conversion is a contested religious, political, and personal phenomenon, and that was also the case in the ancient world. Using several primary sources (Jewish and Christian) and case studies, this volume discusses what this change could have meant for various individuals or groups of people...

The Use and Dissemination of Religious Knowledge in Antiquity

Catherine Hezser, Diana V. Edelman

Ancient Mesopotamian, biblical, rabbinic, and Christian literature was created and transmitted by the intellectual elite and therefore presents their world views and perspectives. This volume investigates for the first time whether and to what extent religious knowledge - e.g., "sacred" narratives,...

Indigenizing Movements in Europe

Graham Harvey

Since the mid-twentieth century, religious movements identifying themselves as Paganism, shamanism, native faiths and others have experimented with two forms of indigeneity. One arises from claims to be reviving or re-presenting previously hidden religious practices from ancestral or pre-Christian t...

Theorizing Religion in Antiquity

Nickolas P. Roubekas

This volume brings theoretical and methodological discussions from religious studies, ancient history, and classics to the study of ancient religions, thus attempting to bridge a disciplinary chasm often apparent in the study of religions in antiquity. It examines theoretical discourses on the speci...

New Antiquities

Dylan M. Burns, Almut-Barbara Renger

Just as we speak of "dead" languages, we say that religions "die out." Yet sometimes, people try to revive them, today more than ever. New Antiquities addresses this phenomenon through critical examination of how individuals and groups appeal to, reconceptualize, and reinvent the religious world of...

Restoring the Chain of Memory

James L. Cox

This book describes and analyses the writings and records compiled by the notable linguist, T.G.H. Strehlow (1908-1978), on Australian Aboriginal religions, particularly as practised by the Arrernte of the central desert region. During numerous research trips between 1932 and 1966, the local Indigen...

Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography

Mario Liverani

Zainab Bahrani, Marc Van De Mieroop

The essays collected in this volume represent a selection of studies, previously published mainly in Italian, that make explicit use of anthropological and semiological tools in order to analyze important texts of historical nature from various regions of the Ancient Near East. They suggest that...