eBook - PDF
A New Science
The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
About this book
We see the word "religion" everywhere, yet do we understand what it means, and is there a consistent worldwide understanding? Who discovered religion and in what context? In A New Science, Guy Stroumsa offers an innovative and powerful argument that the comparative study of religion finds its origin in early modern Europe. The world in which this new category emerged was marked by three major historical and intellectual phenomena: the rise of European empires, that gave birth to ethnological curiosity; the Reformation, which permanently altered Christianity; and the invention of philology, a discipline that transformed Western intellectual thought. Against this complex historical backdrop, Stroumsa guides us through the lives and writings of the men who came to define the word "religion." As Stroumsa boldly argues, the modern study of religion, a new science, was made possible through a dialectical process between Catholic and Protestant scholars. Ancient Israelite religion, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Manichaeanism, Zoroastrianism, the sacred beliefs of the New World, and those of Greece, Rome, India, and China, composed the complex ground upon which "religion," a most modern category, was discovered.
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access A New Science by Guy G. Stroumsa,Guy G. Stroumsa in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Early Modern History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: The Study of Religion as Cultural Criticism
- Chapter I. Paradigm Shift: Exploring the World’s Religions
- Chapter II. Respublica Hebraeorum: Biblical Religion and European Culture
- Chapter III. From Biblical Philology to the Study of Judaism
- Chapter IV. Biblical Myth, Religious History, and Idolatry
- Chapter V. Iranian Religions and the Idea of Dualism
- Chapter VI. From Mohammedis Imposturae to the Three Impostors: The Study of Islam and the Enlightenment
- Chapter VII. From China to Rome: The Discovery of Civil Religion
- Epilogue: From Ritual to Myth
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects