Concept
History of religion
Overview
The history of religion is the written record of human religious feelings, thoughts, and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,200 years ago (3200 BCE). The prehistory of religion involves the study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the advent of written records. One can also study comparative religious chronology through a timeline of religion, or the interrelationships and historical diversification of religious ideologies through the use of evolutionary philosophy and broad comparativism. Writing played a major role in standardizing religious texts regardless of time or location and making easier the memorization of prayers and divine rules.
The concept of "religion" was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries. Sacred texts like the Bible, the Quran, and others did not have a word or even a concept of religion in the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in which these sacred texts were written. Many cultures around the world today and in the past lack concepts or reject distinctions between the natural and supernatural.
The word religion as used in the 21st century does not have an obvious pre-colonial translation into non-European languages. The anthropologist Daniel Dubuisson writes that "what the West and the history of religions in its wake have objectified under the name 'religion' is ... something quite unique, which could be appropriate only to itself and its own history".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
In all events, it is certain that this idea does not appear until late in the history of religions; it is completely foreign, not only to those peoples who are called primitive, but also to all others who have not attained a considerable degree of intellectual culture. When we see them attribute extraordinary virtues to insignificant objects, and people the universe with singular principles, made up of the most…
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what History of religion is; opens on History of religion.
And if the religious sentiment, displayed habitually by the majority of mankind, and occasionally aroused even in those seemingly devoid of it, must be classed among human emotions, we cannot rationally ignore it. We are bound to ask its origin and its function.
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what History of religion is; the author is tied to History of religion in the knowledge graph.
What is actually done is rather to make the contrary presupposition. Histories with such an object as religion or philosophy are understood to have only subjective aims for their theme, i.e. only opinions and mere ideas, not an essential and realised object like the truth. And that with the mere excuse that there is no truth.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
States what History of religion is; opens on History of religion.
Philosophers who discussed History of religion
Related ideas
- French Revolution
- Germany
- Ashoka
- Gnosticism
- Muslim conquest of Persia
- Hedonism
- Hindus
- Philosophy
- Animism
- Neoplatonism and Christianity
- Indian religions
- Iran
- Silk Road transmission of Buddhism
- Vedas
- Judaism
- John Calvin
- Jainism
- Bhakti movement
- Christians
- Eastern Orthodoxy
- Adi Shankara
- Middle Ages
- Culture
- Polytheism
Place in the tradition
Part of Knowledge.