Peter Harrison argues in his ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (9) that the Reformation contributed massively to the development of a new notion of “religion,” especially in the ways Protestants and Catholics redesigned arguments formerly used against . . . . Continue Reading »
Frank Manuel shows that Euhemerism remains a very live option as an explanation of the origins of religions into the eighteenth century ( The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods , ch. III). Isaac Newton took a primarily Euhemerist approach in his Chronology , and Isaac Newton was no idiot. . . . . Continue Reading »
Stroumsa ends his pre-history of comparative religion scholarship ( A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason , 160) with the observation that during the 19th century “the continuing degradation of the status of the Bible would dramatically weaken interest in the biblical . . . . Continue Reading »
The discovery of the Cologne Mani Codex at the University of Cologne in 1969 revealed as great deal about the early history of Manichaeism. According to John Reeve’s Heralds of That Good Realm: Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions (6), the discovery encouraged “a dawning . . . . Continue Reading »
Many have pointed to the early modern privatization of religion, with its corresponding interiorization. Guy Stroumsa ( A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason , 24-6 ) notices something else in the post-Reformation era: “To sum up the key characteristic of the . . . . Continue Reading »
The Jesuit Louis le Comte’s Nouveau memoires sur l’etat present de la Chine (1696) defended the losing Jesuit side in the “rites controversy” - the debate about whether Chinese converts were permitted to continue in ancestor worship and other traditional rites. His book was . . . . Continue Reading »
in their book on religious ceremonies, Bernard and Picart brought out similarities between Western religious practices and those found in Africa, the Americas, and the Far East. As the authors of The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (213-4) . . . . Continue Reading »
Before he wrote on religious ceremonies, Jean Frederic Bernard wrote a treatise on the State of Man in Original Sin , which reworked the notorious On Original Sin (1678) written by Adrianus van Beverland. Beverland had argued that the fall story of Genesis 3 was an allegory for the discovery of . . . . Continue Reading »
More from Peter Brown, this from a review of Bowerstock’s Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity : “Bowersock shows, through a combination of archaeological and textual evidence, that the short-lived Sassanian conquest of the Middle East did not leave the former provinces of East Rome . . . . Continue Reading »
Reviewing GW Bowerstock’s The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam at the NYRB , Peter Brown points to the “religious wars” between Christian Rome and Persia that provided the context for the rise of Islam: “Bowersock also shows how the two great empires of the . . . . Continue Reading »
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