History and the Study of Religion: The Ancient Mediterranean as a Test Case, 1st Edition eBook

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There has long been a trend in religious studies that denies that religion can be an effective category for historians to use across time and cultures.

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About this eTextbook

There has long been a trend in religious studies that denies that religion can be an effective category for historians to use across time and cultures. In History and the Study of Religion Stanley Stowers takes on this assessment by demonstrating a theory of religion that answers the criticisms raised by those claiming that religion is not a useful concept. Drawing on his many years of researching and teaching the history of ancient Christianity in the context of the Mediterranean cultures, he offers a detailed and comprehensive account of how religion serves as a valuable, and even necessary, theory.

Stowers argues that religion is a social kind, a real and relatively stable cross-cultural entity in the social world. Through key developments in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and social theory applied to examples from the ancient Mediterranean and ethnographic analyses, he illustrates the usefulness for creating social theory and historical explanation. The beginnings of Christianity can be explained as arising from ancient Mediterranean religion, which consisted of three sub-kinds: the religion of everyday social exchange, civic religion, and the religion of literate and literary experts.

Christianity emerged primarily from a social field of the experts in interaction with the other two sub-kinds so as to produce a fourth sub-kind, the religion of literate experts with political power. For this last, Stowers discusses topics such as the Christian movement's success in the Roman Empire, whether it was a socially and morally superior form of religion, how it was socially constituted in comparison to other religion in the Empire, its relation to philosophy, whether it was monotheistic, and its most fundamental social dynamics. ISBNs for History and the Study of Religion are 9780197775684, 0197775683 and the print ISBNs are 9780197775677, 0197775675.

Additional ISBNs include 9780197775691, 9780197775707.

Publication details

Author: Stanley Stowers
Publisher: Oxford University Press

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About this eTextbook

Christianity emerged primarily from a social field of the experts in interaction with the other two sub-kinds so as to produce a fourth sub-kind, the religion of literate experts with political power. For this last, Stowers discusses topics such as the Christian movement’s success in the Roman Empire, whether it was a socially and morally superior form of religion, how it was socially constituted in comparison to other religion in the Empire, its relation to philosophy, whether it was monotheistic, and its most fundamental social dynamics. ISBNs for History and the Study of Religion are 9780197775684, 0197775683 and the print ISBNs are 9780197775677, 0197775675.

Additional ISBNs include 9780197775691, 9780197775707.

Publication details

Author: Stanley Stowers
Publisher: Oxford University Press

What you receive

A licensed digital edition of this title, supplied as PDF or EPUB. The format is set by the publisher, so email us the ISBN before ordering and we will confirm which one it is.
Delivered to the email address on your order as a secure download link, usually within minutes and always within 24 hours of payment.
Download links do not expire and there is no cap on re-downloads. Readable on any computer, tablet or phone, online or offline.
This is a digital edition. Nothing is printed, packed or posted, and there is no delivery charge.