Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions

by Bruce Lincoln

Publisher:

The University of Chicago Press

, 2024

Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of religion—historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude.

The book begins with Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” and ends with “The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies,” in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things—inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor—as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian.

 

Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

• Title: Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions
• Author: Bruce Lincoln
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9780226035161, 9780226481869, 0226481867, 0226035166
• Resource ID: LLS:9780226035161
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-11-10T11:19:57Z

About Bruce Lincoln

Bruce Lincoln emphasizes critical approaches to the study of religion. He is particularly interested in issues of discourse, practice, power, conflict, and the violent reconstruction of social borders. His research tends to focus on the religions of pre-Christian Europe and pre-Islamic Iran, but he has a notoriously short attention span and has also written on a bewildering variety of topics, including Guatemalan curanderismo, Lakota sun dances, Melanesian funerary rituals, Swazi kingship, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, Marco Polo, professional wrestling, Persian imperialism, and the theology of George W. Bush. His most recent publications include Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, which won the Frank Moore Cross Award of the American Society of Oriental Research for the best book on the Ancient Near East; Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11; and Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, which won the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in 2000 and the Gordon J. Laing Prize from the University of Chicago Press in 2002. Scheduled to appear in 2009 is La politique du paradis perse (Paris: Éditions Harmattan).