Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice

Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice PDF Author: Ivan Strenski
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004135598
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Strenski argues that public discourse about religious notions, like sacrifice, cannot be theological in our modern societies. Theological notions of sacrifice and theological approaches to it should be replaced by those like that developed by the Durkheimians because theological discourse cannot but help being religiously biased.

Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice

Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice PDF Author: Ivan Strenski
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004135598
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Strenski argues that public discourse about religious notions, like sacrifice, cannot be theological in our modern societies. Theological notions of sacrifice and theological approaches to it should be replaced by those like that developed by the Durkheimians because theological discourse cannot but help being religiously biased.

Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice

Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice PDF Author: Ivan Strenski
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047402731
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Are social scientific theories and confessional theologies of sacrifice equally well suited as public discourse about religion? The French liberal Protestant theologians of the 5th Section of the École Pratique and the French doyen of sociology, Émile Durkheim and his two main followers, Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, engage in a struggle over the proper approach to sacrifice in the public university. The Durkheimians argued that theological language and assumptions were inappropriate for this purpose because of their confessional allegiances. Another approach to sacrifice, free of confessional entanglements, was required. This is what Hubert and Mauss sought to provide in the Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function.

Contesting Sacrifice

Contesting Sacrifice PDF Author: Ivan Strenski
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226777367
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
From the counter-reformation through the twentieth century, the notion of sacrifice has played a key role in French culture and nationalist politics. Ivan Strenski traces the history of sacrificial thought in France, starting from its origins in Roman Catholic theology. Throughout, he highlights not just the dominant discourse on sacrifice but also the many competing conceptions that contested it. Strenski suggests that the annihilating spirituality rooted in the Catholic model of Eucharistic sacrifice persuaded the judges in the Dreyfus Case to overlook or play down his possible innocence because a scapegoat was needed to expiate the sins of France and save its army from disgrace. Strenski also suggests that the French army's strategy in World War I, French fascism, and debates over public education and civic morals during the Third Republic all owe much to Catholic theology of sacrifice and Protestant reinterpretations of it. Pointing out that every major theorist of sacrifice is French, including Bataille, Durkheim, Girard, Hubert, and Mauss, Strenski argues that we cannot fully understand their work without first taking into account the deep roots of sacrificial thought in French history.

Sacrifice and Modern Thought

Sacrifice and Modern Thought PDF Author: Julia Meszaros
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199659281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Leading specialists in theology, anthropology, religious studies and history elucidate the modern debate about sacrifice from interest shown in the sixteenth century through to the present day. Individual chapters discuss anthropological theories, theological controversies, philosophical interpretations, and literary uses of sacrifice.

Understanding Religious Sacrifice

Understanding Religious Sacrifice PDF Author: Jeffrey Carter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441109218
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
This volume provides a thorough introduction to the major classic and modern writings dealing with religious sacrifice. Collected here are twenty five influential selections, each with a brief introduction addressing the overall framework and assumptions of its author. As they present different theories and examples of sacrifice, these selections also discuss important concepts in religious studies such as the origin of religion, totemism, magic, symbolism, violence, structuralism and ritual performance. Students of comparative religion, ritual studies, the history of religions, the anthropology of religion and theories of religion will particularly value the historical organization and thematic analyses presented in this collection.

Origins of Sacrifice

Origins of Sacrifice PDF Author: E. O. James
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781258899677
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1933 edition.

Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam PDF Author: David L. Weddle
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814762816
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
An examination of the practice and philosophy of sacrifice in three religious traditions In the book of Genesis, God tests the faith of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice the life of his beloved son, Isaac. Bound by common admiration for Abraham, the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam also promote the practice of giving up human and natural goods to attain religious ideals. Each tradition negotiates the moral dilemmas posed by Abraham’s story in different ways, while retaining the willingness to perform sacrifice as an identifying mark of religious commitment. This book considers the way in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims refer to “sacrifice”—not only as ritual offerings, but also as the donation of goods, discipline, suffering, and martyrdom. Weddle highlights objections to sacrifice within these traditions as well, presenting voices of dissent and protest in the name of ethical duty. Sacrifice forfeits concrete goods for abstract benefits, a utopian vision of human community, thereby sparking conflict with those who do not share the same ideals. Weddle places sacrifice in the larger context of the worldviews of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, using this nearly universal religious act as a means of examining similarities of practice and differences of meaning among these important world religions. This book takes the concept of sacrifice across these three religions, and offers a cross-cultural approach to understanding its place in history and deep-rooted traditions.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass PDF Author: Michael McGuckian
Publisher: Gracewing Publishing
ISBN: 9780852446348
Category : Lord's Supper
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description


The Temple of Jesus

The Temple of Jesus PDF Author: Bruce Chilton
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The first study to develop a theory of sacrifice and then apply it to the sources of early Judaism as well as Jesus's activity. Ritual sacrifice was one of the greatest concerns and most widely shared activities among Jews prior to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. There is therefore a pressing need for systematic understanding of sacrifice, both as an element of Judaic religion and a context for Jesus's activity. The Temple of Jesus provides a theoretical model of sacrifice and develops that model to analyze classic texts from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish War of Josephus, and it argues that Jesus can only be appreciated as driven by a program to enact his own conception of Israel's purity in sacrifice in order to occasion the disclosure of God's kingdom. Chilton contends that sacrifice is construed as a fundamentally social, "pre-civilized" activity involving pragmata as defined as pure, an emotional affect for participants, and an ideology according to which sacrifice occasions a change of life in the community, thus rejecting current anthropological studies that attempt to explain sacrifice genetically. He shows that texts from Ezekiel, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy share a conviction that the covenant with Israel ensures the validity of sacrifice, even as they define purity in various ways and emphasize differing affects of sacrifice. Finally, Chilton provides a new approach to Jesus, comparing and contrasting his occupation of the Temple with the cultic activities of prominent Pharisees of his period.

Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple

Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple PDF Author: Jonathan Klawans
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195395840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Ancient Jewish sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Some find in sacrifice the key to the mysterious and violent origins of human culture. Others see these cultic rituals as merely the fossilized vestiges of primitive superstition. Some believe that ancient Jewish sacrifice was doomed from the start, destined to be replaced by the Christian eucharist. Others think that the temple was fated to be superseded by the synagogue. In Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple Jonathan Klawans demonstrates that these supersessionist ideologies have prevented scholars from recognizing the Jerusalem temple as a powerful source of meaning and symbolism to the ancient Jews who worshiped there. Klawans exposes and counters such ideologies by reviewing the theoretical literature on sacrifice and taking a fresh look at a broad range of evidence concerning ancient Jewish attitudes toward the temple and its sacrificial cult. The first step toward reaching a more balanced view is to integrate the study of sacrifice with the study of purity-a ritual structure that has commonly been understood as symbolic by scholars and laypeople alike. The second step is to rehabilitate sacrificial metaphors, with the understanding that these metaphors are windows into the ways sacrifice was understood by ancient Jews. By taking these steps-and by removing contemporary religious and cultural biases-Klawans allows us to better understand what sacrifice meant to the early communities who practiced it. Armed with this new understanding, Klawans reevaluates the ideas about the temple articulated in a wide array of ancient sources, including Josephus, Philo, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, and Rabbinic literature. Klawans mines these sources with an eye toward illuminating the symbolic meanings of sacrifice for ancient Jews. Along the way, he reconsiders the ostensible rejection of the cult by the biblical prophets, the Qumran sect, and Jesus. While these figures may have seen the temple in their time as tainted or even defiled, Klawans argues, they too-like practically all ancient Jews-believed in the cult, accepted its symbolic significance, and hoped for its ultimate efficacy.