The nineteenth century witnessed a proliferation of alternative religious currents and practices, appropriating earlier traditions, entangling geographically distinct spiritual discourses, and crafting a repository of mindscapes eminently suitable to be accommodated by later generations of thinkers and practitioners. Penned by specialists in the field, this volume examines important themes and figures pertaining to this occult amalgam and its resonance into the twentieth century and beyond. Global guises of the occult, ranging from the Americas and Europe to India, are variously addressed, with special attention to the crucial role of mesmerism and the origins of modern yoga.

This detailed study by Jutta Sperber shows how the magisterium of the Roman-Catholic Church, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and various parts of the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia to Iran have been engaged in Christian-Muslim dialogues. The mainly anthropological topics range from tolerance and human dignity, the position of women and children, media and education, to mission, resources and nationalism. They paint an interesting picture of the position of Man before God and the world in both Christianity and Islam.

This book offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of religious identities in the Global South. Drawing on literature in various fields, Felix Wilfred analyzes how religious identities intersect with the processes of globalization, modernity, and postmodernity. He illustrates how the study of religion in the Global North often revolves around questions of secularism and fundamentalism, whereas a neo-Orientalist quality often attends study of religion in the Global South. These approaches and theorizing fail to incorporate the experiences of lived religion in the South, especially in Asia. Historically, the religions in the South have played a highly significant role in resistance to the domination by the colonial forces, an important reason for the continued attachment of the peoples of the South to their religious universe. This book puts the two regions and their scholarly norms in conversation with one another, exploring the social, political, cultural, and economic implications.

The scientific debates on border crossings and cultural exchange between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have much increased over the last decades. Within this context, however, little attention has been given to the biblical Exodus, which not only plays a pivotal role in the Abrahamic religions, but also is a master narrative of a border crossing in itself. Sea and desert are spaces of liminality and transit in more than just a geographical sense. Their passage includes a transition to freedom and initiation into a new divine community, an encounter with God and an entry into the Age of law. The volume gathers twelve articles written by leading specialists in Jewish and Islamic Studies, Theology and Literature, Art and Film history, dedicated to the transitional aspects within the Exodus narrative. Bringing these studies together, the volume takes a double approach, one that is both comparative and intercultural. How do Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts and images read and retell the various border crossings in the Exodus story, and on what levels do they interrelate? By raising these questions the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of contact points between the various traditions.

This book demonstrates the close link between medicine and Buddhism in early and medieval Japan. It may seem difficult to think of Japanese Buddhism as being linked to the realm of medical practices since religious healing is usually thought to be restricted to prayers for divine intervention. There is a surprising lack of scholarship regarding medicinal practices in Japanese Buddhism although an overwhelming amount of primary sources proves otherwise. A careful re-reading of well-known materials from a study-of-religions perspective, together with in some cases a first-time exploration of manuscripts and prints, opens new views on an understudied field. The book presents a topical survey and comprises chapters on treating sight-related diseases, women's health, plant-based materica medica and medicinal gardens, and finally horse medicine to include veterinary knowledge. Terminological problems faced in working on this material - such as 'religious' or 'magical healing' as opposed to 'secular medicine' - are assessed. The book suggests focusing more on the plural nature of the Japanese healing system as encountered in the primary sources and reconsidering the use of categories from the European intellectual tradition.

In the providence of God, why are there other religions? Was the God of the Bible wise in allowing for them? Can they serve any purpose? Gerald R. McDermott explores reflection on teaching from the Old and New Testaments and from a number of key teachers from the early church to suggest an answer to this perplexing but intriguing question. In the end McDermott provides considerable insight into the troubling clash of world religions and offers a helpful Christian response.

In this study, Paul S. Chung charts the history of social scientific study of religion from the axial age to the present day, and thereby lays a foundation for a new model of constructive theology in the comparative study of religion, culture and society. Analysing the thought of Max Weber, Alfred Schutz, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Edmund Husserl, Max Horkheimer and others, Chung deals effectively with material interests, power relations and the history of race, gender and sexuality. The result is a synthesis that is at once innovative, critical, and applicable to current methodology in theology and the social sciences.

It is often said that the real confrontation between Christianity and the great religions of the world is only just beginning. Bishop Kulandran's book on the pivotal religious doctrine of Grace marks the first stage in the new encounter between Christianity and Hinduism. The result of considerable research and theological reflection, Bishop Kulandran's book is an objective and scholarly appraisal of Christianity and Hinduism, their similarities and differences, and of the two different worlds in which they move. Hinduism's uncertainty about the character of God and Christianity's dogmatic certainty are examined in detail. The sense of man's need of God's grace in Christianity, and Hinduism's rejection of any act of reconciliation are seen by Bishop Kulandran as central to the dialogue between the two religions. As Dr. Hendrik Kraemer says in the foreword, Bishop Kulandran's book "is animated by the desire for fair presentation and understanding and is a new and important contribution to the subject and not merely a repetition of what has often been said before". The author belonged by birth and experience to the Indian world and as a Bishop of the Church of South India knew the power as well as the limitations of the Christian mission in the world of Hinduism. This scholarly work is a valuable contribution to comparative religion and is an illuminating exploration of two of the world's most important religions.

Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas explores spirit-based religious traditions across vast geographical and cultural expanses, including Canada, the United States, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. Using interdisciplinary research methods, this collection of original perspectives breaks new ground by examining these traditions as typologically and historically related. This curated selection of the traditions allows readers to compare and highlight convergences, while the description and comparison of the traditions challenges colonial erasures and expands knowledge about endangered cultures. The inclusion of spirit-based traditions from a broad geographical area emphasizes the typology of religion over ethnic compartmentalization. The individuals and communities studied in this collection serve spirits through ritual, singing, instruments, initiation, embodiment via possession or trance, veneration of nature, and, among some indigenous people, the consumption of ritual psychoactive entheogens. Indigenous and African diaspora practices focused on service to ancestors and spirits reflect ancient substrates of religiosity. The rationale to separate them on disciplinary, ethnic, linguistic, geographical, or historical grounds evaporates in our interconnected world. Shared cultural, historical, and structural features of American indigenous and African diaspora spirit-based traditions mutually deserve our attention since the analyses and dialogues give way to discoveries about deep commonalities and divergences among religions and philosophies. Still struggling against the effects of colonialism, enslavement, and extinction, the practitioners of these spirit-based religious traditions hold on to important but vulnerable parts of humanity's cultural heritage. These readings make possible journeys of recognition as well as discovery.

This book proves that each religious dogma, in any of their components, contain in an encoded manner a specific ranking of human comprehensive mega-objectives, implicitly, a specific preference for absolute wealth or, in a more common parlance, for the objective of economic performance. In turn, that specific preference, under ceteris paribus condition, determines the share of believer's general resources which is channeled to economic performance. An in-depth or correct understanding of a religious dogma, which makes sense for terrestrial social realities, is impossible without a specific model of decoding. Additionally, such a model is simply impossible within an orthodox Western, that is, non-transcultural perspective. There is no accident that all Western efforts to decode religions, economic or non-economic, have failed. Understanding religion based on its face story is very precarious, if not even dangerous.

For Jews, Christians and Muslims, as for all human beings, military conflicts and war remain part of the reality of the world. The authoritative writings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, namely the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Koran, as well as the theological and philosophical traditions based on them, bear witness to this fact. Showing the influence of different historical political situations, various views - sometimes quite similar, sometimes more divergent -- have developed in the three religions to justify the waging of war under certain circumstances. Such views have also been integrated in different ways into legal systems while, in certain cases, theologies have provide legitimation for military expansion and atrocities. The aim of the volume The Concept of Just War in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is to explore the respective understanding of "just war" in each one of these three religions and to make their commonalities and differences discursively visible. In addition, it highlights and explains the significance of the topic to the present time. Can the concepts developed in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions in order to justify war, serve as a foundation for contemporary peace ethics? Or do religious arguments always add fuel to the fire in armed conflict? The contributions in this volume will help provide answers to these and other socially and politically relevant questions.

This completely reworked second edition of Modern Esoteric includes new information, over a dozen additional images, and up-to-date revisions. Winner of the Best Book Design 2014, Modern Esoteric examines the flaws in modern history and looks at how conspiracy theories, esoteric knowledge, and fringe subjects can be used to help change the dead-end course humanity seems to be following. The Lifeology section explores the long and storied "alternative narrative" of life on this planet. In the Control section, author Brad Olsen examines how Big Brother is here in the form of the New World Order, and how they keep the knowledge of humankind's true nature from the mass population. Finally, the Thrive section looks at all the ways humans are evolving to achieve their full potential.

The discovery by Charles Darwin of natural selection as the principal mechanism of biological evolution sharpened the classical theological issue of suffering in the natural world. Darwin's discovery revealed predation and starvation to be the engine of biological development. Theological responses to evolution within the Christian tradition have typically failed to come to terms with these features of biological evolution, focusing instead on romantic notions of nature or assumptions about the benefits of progress. As a result, many doctrines of creation have operated with a limited understanding of the created world that is their subject. As Joel C. Daniels shows, however, this shortcoming can be remedied by utilizing the ancient resources of dramatic tragedy in a theological vein. By drawing together a theological interpretation of tragedy and a scientifically accurate understanding of nature, a realist doctrine of creation can achieve a high degree of realism with regards to suffering, respecting the unique characteristics of individual experiences while situating them in a theologically meaningful frame of reference. The theological category of tragedy does not solve the problem of natural evil. However, it has the double virtue of attending closely to the specifics of the natural world and maintaining a principled tension between experiences of suffering and Christian claims about the possibility of redemption. This book thus makes a unique contribution to Christian theology by drawing on multiple disciplines to address this issue of existential importance.

This volume draws on an interdisciplinary team of authors to advance the study of the religious dimensions of communication and the linguistic aspects of religion. Contributions cover: poetry, iconicity, and iconoclasm in religious language; semiotic ideologies in traditional religions and in secularism; and the role of materiality and writing in religious communication. This volume will provoke new approaches to language and religion.

Current tendencies in religious studies and theology show a growing interest for the interchange between religions and the cultures of rationalization surrounding them. The studies published in this volume, based on the international conferences of both the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, aim to contribute to this field of interest by dealing with concepts and influences of rationalization in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and religion in general. In addition to taking a closer look at the immediate links in the history of tradition between those rationalizing movements and evolutions in religion, emphasis is put on intellectual-historical convergences: Therefore, the articles are led by central comparative questions, such as what factors foster/hinder rationalization?; where are criteria for rationalization drawn from?; in which institutions is rationalization taking place?; who propagates, supports and utilizes rationalization?

The eighth volume of the series "Key Concepts of Interreligious Discourses" investigates the roots of the concept of "peace" in Judaism, Christianity and Islam and its relevance for the present time. Facing present violent conflicts waged and justified by religious ideas or reasons, peace building prevails in current debates about religion and peace. Here the central question is: How may traditional sources in religions help to put down the weapons and create a society in which everyone can live safely without hostilities and the threat of violence? When we take the Sacred Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam into consideration it becomes obvious that the term "peace" and its equivalents in Hebrew, Greek and Arabic describe, at first, an ideal state based on the "love" / "mercy" of God to his creation. It is a divine gift that brings inward peace to the individuum and outer peace resting upon justice and equality. One main task of Jews, Christian and Muslims in the history is to find out how to bring down this transcendent ideal upon earth. The volume presents the concept of "peace" in its different aspects as anchored in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It unfolds commonalities and differences between the three monotheistic religions as well as the manifold discourses about peace within these three traditions. The book offers fundamental knowledge about the specific understanding of peace in each one of these traditions, their interdependencies and their relationship to secular world views.

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to Alexandria, both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages, as well as gnostic, rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed. In this volume, a range of scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish, Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse approaches to, and modes of, knowledge transmission and concealment, shedding new light on both the interconnectedness, as well as the unique aspects, of the monotheistic faiths, and their relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.

Contemplative experience is central to Hindu yoga traditions, Buddhist meditation practices, and Catholic mystical theology, and, despite doctrinal differences, it expresses itself in suggestively similar meditative landmarks in each of these three meditative systems. In Yoga, Meditation and Mysticism, Kenneth Rose shifts the dominant focus of contemporary religious studies away from tradition-specific studies of individual religious traditions, communities, and practices to examine the 'contemplative universals' that arise globally in meditative experience. Through a comparative exploration of the itineraries detailed in the contemplative manuals of Theravada Buddhism, Patanjalian Yoga, and Catholic mystical theology, Rose identifies in each tradition a moment of sharply focused awareness that marks the threshold between immersion in mundane consciousness and contemplative insight. As concentration deepens, the meditator steps through this threshold onto a globally shared contemplative itinerary, which leads through a series of virtually identical stages to mental stillness and insight. Rose argues that these contemplative universals, familiar to experienced contemplatives in multiple traditions, point to a common spiritual, mental, and biological heritage. Pioneering the exploration of contemplative practice and experience with a comparative perspective that ranges over multiple religious traditions, religious studies, philosophy, neuroscience, and the cognitive science of religion, this book is a landmark contribution to the fields of contemplative practice and religious studies.

Is it possible to rethink the multilayered and polyvalent Christology of the Qur'an against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics, and the making of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East? To what extent may this help us to decipher, moreover, the intricate redactional process of the quranic corpus? And can we unearth from any conclusions as to the tension between a messianic-oriented and a prophetic-guided religious thought buried in the document? By analysing, first, the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur'an (which implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur'an and the common thematic division of the passages in question) and by examining, in the second place, the Qur'an's earliest Christology via-a-vis its later (and indeed much better known) Muhamadan kerygma, the present study answers these crucial questions and, thereby, sheds new light on the Qur'an's original sectarian milieu and pre-canonical development.

The Cross of Christ: Foundational Islamic Perspectives takes an in-depth look at all of the medieval Muslim scholars considered to have affirmed Jesus' crucifixion. Each chapter provides the important historical and intellectual context for the commentators. As well, critical new translations of key texts are provided, offering important access to vital documents and schools of thought. The author argues that, rather than affirming the historicity of the crucifixion, the Isma'ilis tend to assume its historicity, in order to advance important Isma'ili doctrines. The author also contends that the commentators who explored ways to affirm the crucifixion, nonetheless made extensive use of traditional substitution legends that deny the crucifixion. In order to orient the reader, the book starts by introducing the reader to the Jesus of the Qur'an. It then compares him to the Jesus of the New Testament and the Jesus of extra canonical literature. Upon this Qur'anic skeleton, the author layers a myriad of details found in seventeen works of classic Islamic literature, so that a truly unique, authentic and authoritative Jesus of Islam emerges.

In this book Muslims, men and women alike, speak from the heart about what they believe and how they live. The central tenets of Islam are put forward by doctors, engineers, politicians, bankers and carpenters, as well as by theologians. Islam has a billion followers. The beliefs of Islam, like those of the other great religions, must be taken seriously if we wish to understand the world in which we live. What do followers of the Islamic tradition have to say about family life, money, education, racial equality and the ecology of our planet? Muslim readers of earlier editions of The Muslim Mind welcomed the Christian author who had portrayed their faith with fairness and candor. The sincere answers to her inquiries given by many Muslims afford a vivid insight into the spirit and practice of Islam.

For over 2500 years, Buddhism was implicated in processes of cultural interaction that in turn shaped Buddhist doctrines, practices and institutions. While the cultural plurality of Buddhism has often been remarked upon, the transcultural processes that constitute this plurality, and their long-term effects, have scarcely been studied as a topic in their own right. The contributions to this volume present detailed case studies ranging across different time periods, regions and disciplines, and they address methodological challenges as well as theoretical problems. In addition to casting a spotlight on topics as diverse as the role of trade contacts in the early spread of Buddhism, the hybrid nature of religious practices in Japan or Indo-Tibetan relations in Tibetan polemical literature, the individual papers jointly raise the question as to whether there might be something distinct about how Buddhism steers and influences forms of cultural exchange, and is in turn shaped by modalities of cultural interaction throughout Asian, as well as global, history. The volume is intended to demonstrate the need for investigating transcultural dynamics more closely in the study of Buddhism, and to suggest new avenues for Buddhist Studies.