Overview

This collection of essays constitute an extended argument for an anthropocentric, human-focused, study of religious practices. The basic premise of the argument, offered in the opening section, is that there is nothing special or extraordinary about human behaviors and constructs that are claimed to have uniquely religious status and authority. Instead, they are fundamentally human and so the scholar of religion is engaged in nothing more or less than studying humans across time and place and all their complex existence-that includes creating more-than-human beings and realities. As an extended and detailed example of such an approach, the second part of the book contains essays that address practices, rhetoric and other data in early Christianities within Greco-Roman cultures and religions. The underlying aim is to insert studies of the New Testament and non-canonical texts, most often presented as ""biblical studies,"" into the anthropocentric study of religion proposed in the opening section. For a general reading of modern biblical scholarship makes clear the assumption that the Christian bible is a ""sacred text"" whose principal raison d'etre is to stand, fetish-like, as the foundational and highest authority in matters moral, ritual or theological; how might we instead approach the study of these texts if they are nothing more or less than human documents deriving from situations that were themselves all too human? Braun's Jesus and Addiction to Origins seeks to answer just that question-doing so in a way that readers working outside Christian origins will undoubtedly find useful applications for the people, places, and historical periods that they study.

Full Product Details

Author:   Willi Braun ,  Russell T McCutcheon
Publisher:   Equinox Publishing Ltd
Imprint:   Equinox Publishing Ltd
Weight:   0.404kg
ISBN:  

9781781799420

ISBN 10:   1781799423
Pages:   216
Publication Date:   10 November 2020
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Editor's Foreword Russell T. McCutcheon Preface Willi Braun I. Generalities 1. Religion: A Guide 2. The Irony of Religion 3. Introducing Religion II. Particularities 4. Jesus and Addiction to Origins 5. Christian Origins and the Gospel of Mark: Fragments of a Story 6. The Sayings Gospel Q and the Making of an Early Jesus Group 7. In the Beginning Was Not the Word 8. Sex, Gender and Empire: Virgins and Eunuchs in the Ancient Mediterranean World 9. Physiotherapy of Femininity in Early Christianity: Ideology and Practice 10. Our Religion Compels Us to Make a Distinction : Prolegomena on Meals and Social Formation III. Afterword Reification, Religion, and the Relics of the Past William E. Arnal, University of Regina

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Author Information

Willi Braun is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and Classics and the Program in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. Russell T. McCutcheon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

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