Download or read book Priests Warriors and Cattle written by Bruce Lincoln and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Do cultures which have similar socio-economic and ecological bases also have similar religious systems? This is the basic issue raised in this book. Underlying this is the question of whether religion is to be seen as an independent, free-floating speculative entity, or whether it is rooted in and largely determined by the givens of culture, economy, and ecology. In other words, is religion primarily directed toward abstract universal concerns, or are practical and temporal matters a fundamental part of religious thought? To address this problem the author has selected a test case, in which two cultures, historically and geographically quite separate but ecologically and socio-economically quite similar, are compared. Two semi-settled pastoralist groups whose livelihood depends on the herding of cattle were selected: the present-day Nilotic peoples of Africa (Nuer, Dinka, and Masai) and the Proto-Indo-Iranians, who flourished about 2000 B.C. The religion of each group is examined in detail, with special emphasis being placed on the myths they recount, the rituals they practice, and the ways in which their societies are organized, as well as the gods they worship"--Book jacket.
Download or read book Priests Warriors and Cattle written by Bruce Lincoln and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Do cultures which have similar socio-economic and ecological bases also have similar religious systems? This is the basic issue raised in this book. Underlying this is the question of whether religion is to be seen as an independent, free-floating speculative entity, or whether it is rooted in and largely determined by the givens of culture, economy, and ecology. In other words, is religion primarily directed toward abstract universal concerns, or are practical and temporal matters a fundamental part of religious thought? To address this problem the author has selected a test case, in which two cultures, historically and geographically quite separate but ecologically and socio-economically quite similar, are compared. Two semi-settled pastoralist groups whose livelihood depends on the herding of cattle were selected: the present-day Nilotic peoples of Africa (Nuer, Dinka, and Masai) and the Proto-Indo-Iranians, who flourished about 2000 B.C. The religion of each group is examined in detail, with special emphasis being placed on the myths they recount, the rituals they practice, and the ways in which their societies are organized, as well as the gods they worship"--Book jacket.
Download or read book Heaven Heroes and Happiness written by Shan M. M. Winn and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1995 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heaven, Heroes and Happiness explores Western culture and its pervasive ideology while tracing its roots back to an ancient Proto-Indo-European homeland. This book explores ancient myth, the evidence of language history, and the archaeological record in an endeavor to show that the origin of Western civilization lies much deeper than had been anticipated. Contents: Patterns and Themes of Indo-European Ideology; Unveiling the Indo-European Legacy; The Ideology of Tripartite Completeness; Class, Conflict, and Compromise; 'Fear God'; Heroes with a Cause; The Pursuit of Happiness; Origins and Destinies Reinterpreted; In the Beginning; Ancient Myth in Disguise; The Armageddon Cycle; Indo-European Expansion and Ideological Impact; Twilight of the Goddess; A Collision of Cultures; Linguistic Paleontology; Quest for a Homeland.
Download or read book The Study of Religion Under the Impact of Fascism written by Horst Junginger and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the European study of religion in the interwar-period, these proceedings tackle one of the most problematic epochs of its history. The commonplace that understanding the present requires learning from the past is particularly true, as this case well illustrates.
Download or read book The Goddesses Henchmen written by Lindsey Harlan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title examines the worship of ancestral heroes in Rajasthan, India. Arguing that Rajput hero stories and songs encapsulate and express ideals of perfection and masculinity, it analyzes representations of wives and goddesses as tacit allies dispatching sacrificed heroes to heavenly paradise.
Download or read book The Cattle of the Sun written by Jeremy McInerney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though Greece is traditionally seen as an agrarian society, cattle were essential to Greek communal life, through religious sacrifice and dietary consumption. Cattle were also pivotal in mythology: gods and heroes stole cattle, expected sacrifices of cattle, and punished those who failed to provide them. The Cattle of the Sun ranges over a wealth of sources, both textual and archaeological, to explore why these animals mattered to the Greeks, how they came to be a key element in Greek thought and behavior, and how the Greeks exploited the symbolic value of cattle as a way of structuring social and economic relations. Jeremy McInerney explains that cattle's importance began with domestication and pastoralism: cattle were nurtured, bred, killed, and eaten. Practically useful and symbolically potent, cattle became social capital to be exchanged, offered to the gods, or consumed collectively. This circulation of cattle wealth structured Greek society, since dedication to the gods, sacrifice, and feasting constituted the most basic institutions of Greek life. McInerney shows that cattle contributed to the growth of sanctuaries in the Greek city-states, as well as to changes in the economic practices of the Greeks, from the Iron Age through the classical period, as a monetized, market economy developed from an earlier economy of barter and exchange. Combining a broad theoretical approach with a careful reading of sources, The Cattle of the Sun illustrates the significant position that cattle held in the culture and experiences of the Greeks. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.
Download or read book Irreverence and the Sacred written by Hugh B. Urban and published by Paperbackshop UK Import. This book was released on 2019 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irreverence and the Sacred brings together some of the most cutting edge, interdisciplinary, and international scholars working today in order to debate key issues in the critical and comparative study of religion. The project is inspired in large part by the work of Bruce Lincoln, whose influential and wide-ranging scholarship has consistently posed challenging, provocative, and often-irreverent questions that have really pushed the boundaries of the field of religious studies in important, sometimes controversial ways. Retracing the history of the discipline of religious studies, Lincoln argues that the field has tended to champion a "validating, feel-good" approach to religion, rather than posing more critical questions about religious claims to authority and their role in history, politics, and social change. A critical approach to the history of religions, he suggests, would focus on the human, temporal, and material aspects of phenomena that are claimed to have a superhuman, eternal, or transcendent status. This volume takes up Lincoln's challenge to "do better," by engaging in critical analyses of four key themes in the study of religion: myth, ritual, gender, and politics. The book also interrogates the "politics of scholarship" itself, critically examining the relations of power and material interests at work in the study as well as the practice of religion. The scholars involved in this project include not only some of the most important figures in the American study of religion--such as Wendy Doniger, Russell McCutcheon, Ivan Strenski, and Lincoln himself--but also European scholars whose work is hugely influential overseas but not as well known in the U.S.--such as Stefan Arvidsson, Claude Calame, Nicolas Meylan, and others.
Download or read book Wolves of Rome written by Krešimir Vuković and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-12-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study is a fresh interpretation of the Roman foundation myth and one of the most important Roman festivals – the Lupercalia, an annual celebration of youth and sexuality by Roman men and women. Written with clarity and force the book spans the whole of Roman history and takes the Lupercalia back to its Indo-European roots by presenting clear parallels between Roman and Indian traditions.
Download or read book Essays on Vedic and Indo European Culture written by Boris Oguibénine and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 1998 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the cultural and religious patterns as these may be reconstructed on a twofold basis: Vedic poets views as known from the Rgveda and some old Indo-European literary sources examined in a comparative perspective. In its main bulk offers a novel approach to the Vedic theory of sacrifice from the point of view of the Vedic priest as an individual social type whose doing was conditioned by the conflict between the groups practising sacrifice as well as the tension between the patron of the sacrifice and the officiant. It also envisages the integration of the warrior into the sacrificial ritual and suggests a solution to the problem of the daksina (commonly called sacrificial priest`s salary) interpreted as a materialisation of the relation between the priest, the gods invoked and the patrons of sacrifice, the daksina`s function being to denote the value of the poetic word in the prayer.The book tackles also some particular issues in Vedic and Indo-European religions: the typology of the warrior, the `cooking` of the poetic word linked to the double-entendre in Vedic poetry designed as a means to solve the problem of the relative importance of the speech within sacrificial ritual and of the food offerings to the gods; the early origins of the yogic practice in Vedic times related to some Indo-European practices as disclosed in Avestan, Hittite and Latin texts.
Download or read book WealthWatch written by Michael S. Moore and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to help postmodern Westerners understand what the Bible has to say about wealth and possessions, basing itself on the presumption that (a) nobody can understand themselves apart from some recognition of their spiritual roots, and (b) that these roots sink deeper into the pages of the Bible than most Westerners realize. Focusing upon that part of the Bible most widely recognized to be its ideological core--that which is called Torah by some, Pentateuch by others--it interprets this "great text" against other "great texts" in its literary-historical environment, including (a) some epic poems from Mesopotamia, (b) some Jewish texts from Syria-Palestine, and (c) some Nazarene parables from the Greek New Testament.
Download or read book The Sense of Adharma written by Ariel Glucklich and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing one of the most difficult conceptual topics in the study of classical Hinduism, Ariel Glucklich presents a rigorous phenomenology of dharma, or order. The work moves away from the usual emphasis on symbols and theoretical formulations of dharma as a religious and moral norm. Instead, it focuses on images that emerge from the basic experiential interaction of the body in its spatial and temporal contexts, such as the sensation of water on the skin during the morning purification, or the physical manipulation of the bride during the marriage ritual. Images of dharma are examined in myths, rituals, art, and even the physical landscape of the Hindu world. The varied and contingent experiences of dharma infuse it with a meaning that transcends a false analytical distinction from adharma, or chaos. Glucklich shows that when dharma is experienced by means of living images, it becomes inescapably temporal, and therefore inseparable from adharma
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion written by Michael Stausberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.
Download or read book The Epic Hero written by Dean A. Miller and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-22 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title From Odysseus to Aeneas, from Beowulf to King Arthur, from the Mahâbhârata to the Ossetian "Nart" tales, epic heroes and their stories have symbolized the power of the human imagination. Drawing on diverse disciplines including classics, anthropology, psychology, and literary studies, this product of twenty years' scholarship provides a detailed typology of the hero in Western myth: birth, parentage, familial ties, sexuality, character, deeds, death, and afterlife. Dean A. Miller examines the place of the hero in the physical world (wilderness, castle, prison cell) and in society (among monarchs, fools, shamans, rivals, and gods). He looks at the hero in battle and quest; at his political status; and at his relationship to established religion. The book spans Western epic traditions, including Greek, Roman, Nordic, and Celtic, as well as the Indian and Persian legacies. A large section of the book also examines the figures who modify or accompany the hero: partners, helpers (animals and sometimes monsters), foes, foils, and even antitypes. The Epic Hero provides a comprehensive and provocative guide to epic heroes, and to the richly imaginative tales they inhabit.
Download or read book Religion written by David Chidester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion: Material Dynamics is a lively resource for thinking about religious materiality and the material study of religion. Deconstructing and reconstructing religion as material categories, social formations, and mobile circulations, the book explores the making, ordering, and circulating of religious things. The book is divided into three sections: Part One revitalizes basic categories—animism and sacred, space and time—by situating them in their material production and testing their analytical viability. Part Two examines religious formations as configurations of power that operate in material cultures and cultural economies and are most clearly shown in the power relations of colonialism and imperialism. Part Three explores the material dynamics of circulation through case studies of religious mobility, change, and diffusion as intimate as the body and as vast as the oceans. Each chapter offers insightful orientations and surprising possibilities for studying material religion. Exploring the material dynamics of religion from poetics to politics, David Chidester provides an entry into the study of material religion that will be welcomed by students and specialists in religious studies, anthropology, and history.
Download or read book An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion written by William W. Malandra and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eat Not this Flesh written by Frederick J. Simoons and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the use and avoidance of flesh foods, including beef, pork, chicken, and eggs, camel, dog, horse, and fish, from antiquity to the present day. Simoons finds that the recurrent theme of maintaining ritual purity, good health, and well-being underlies diet habits. He emphasizes that only a full range of factors can explain eating patterns, and stresses the interplay of religious, moral, hygienic, ecological, and economic factors in the context of human culture. From publisher description.
Download or read book Beyond Beef written by Jeremy Rifkin and published by HarperThorsons. This book was released on 1994 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first three parts of this book an exploration of the historical role of cattle in Western civilization is given. Part four examines the human impact of the modern cattle complex and the world beef culture. The range of environmental threats that have been created, in part, by the modern cattle complex is described in part five. Part six examines the psychology of cattle complexes and the politics of beef eating in Western society. The author hopes that this book will contribute to moving our society beyond beef
