Religion, Terror, and Violence: Religious Studies Perspectives
Edited by Bryan Rennie and Philip L. Tite
Forthcoming from Routledge. This book brings together a collection of interdisciplinary essays primarily by religious studies scholars,
offering critical analyses of the relationship of religion and violence, particularly 9/11 and the subsequent "War on Terror."
THE IRANIAN ROOTS OF CHRISTIANITY
“Iranian Eschatology and Middle Eastern Religion: The Absence of the Zoroastrian Tradition from Mainstream Anglophone Biblical and Religious Studies,”
a paper delivered at a session on “Egregious Elephants?: Unexplained Oversights and Omissions in the Academic Study of Religion,” organized by the
North American Association for the Study of Religion at their annual meeting at the American Academy of Religion Annual
national conference, Washington DC, Friday November 17th, 2006. Appeared in The Bulletin of the Council of Societies
for the Study of Religion, 36/1 (February, 2007): 3-7 under the title “Zoroastrianism: The Iranian Roots of Christianity?”
Abstract:
For over a century occasional but insistent claims have been made regarding the debt owed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the Zoroastrian tradition, particularly
concerning beliefs about the End of Time. Despite difficulties in dating the Iranian materials, significant advances have recently been made and a clearer consensus has
emerged. In the light of these advances the lack of any significant response from mainstream Biblical and Religious Studies in the Anglophone world is hard to justify. The
almost total failure to respond to the claims of scholars of Iranian history cannot be adequately explained in terms of warranted academic caution and understandable
uncertainty, but must be attributed to less defensible ideological causes.
MIRCEA ELIADE: A CRITICAL READER
RECENTLY APPEARED from Equinox Books (see
under "Critical Categories in the Study of Religion"). This anthology is a collection of key essays by and about the Romanian-American Historian of Religions. It introduces the beginning student to the terms and categories of
Eliade's understanding of religious behavior as a universal phenomenon.
THE INTERNATIONAL ELIADE:
Recent ly appeared from the State University of New York Press, a collection of critical essays on
Mircea Eliade by authors from around the world, excluding the Anglophone world. This anthology grows out of two Symposium sessions at:
IAHR
DURBAN CONGRESS 2000
XVIII Quinquennial Congress:
Durban, 5-12 August 2000
Please e-mail inquiries to:
Bryan Rennie