Sacrifice In Religious Experience

This book presents revised papers delivered at the 1998 and 1999 Taubes Minerva Center for Religious Anthropology conferences. The papers from the 1998 conference discuss the role of sacrifice in religious experience from a comparative perspective. Those from the second conference examine alternatives to sacrifice. The first theme has been much elaborated in recent scholarship, and the essays here participate in that on-going inquiry. The second theme has been less explored, and the goal of this volume is to stimulate examination of the topic by offering a set of test cases. In both sections of the volume a wide variety of religious traditions are considered. The essays show that in spite of the inclination we may sometimes have to consider sacrifice part of the idolatrous past, long overcome, it remains a persistent and meaningful part of religious experience.

In this book Maurice Bloch synthesises a radical theory of religion.

Acts of martyrdom have been found in nearly all the worlds major religious traditions. Though considered by devotees to be perhaps the most potent expression of religious faith, dying for ones god is also one of the most difficult concepts for modern observers of religion to understand. This is especially true in the West, where martyrdom has all but disappeared and martyrs in other cultures are often viewed skeptically and dismissed as fanatics. This book seeks to foster a greater understanding of these acts of religious devotion by explaining how martyrdom has historically been viewed in the worlds major religions. It provides the first sustained, cross-cultural examination of this fascinating aspect of religious life. Margaret Cormack begins with an introduction that sets out a definition of martyrdom that serves as the point of departure for the rest of the volume. Then, scholars of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam examine martyrdom in specific religious cultures. Spanning 4000 years of history and ranging from Saul in the Hebrew Bible to Sati immolations in present-day India, this book provides a wealth of insight into an often noted but rarely understood cultural phenomenon.

For some time interest has been growing in a dialogue between modern scientific research into human cognition and research in the humanities. This ground-breaking volume focuses this dialogue on the religious experience of men and women in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Each chapter examines a particular historical problem arising from an ancient religious activity and the contributions range across a wide variety of both ancient contexts and sources, exploring and integrating literary, epigraphic, visual and archaeological evidence. In order to avoid a simple polarity between physical aspects (ritual) and mental aspects (belief) of religion, the contributors draw on theories of cognition as embodied, emergent, enactive and extended, accepting the complexity, multimodality and multicausality of human life. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the chapters open up new questions around and develop new insights into the physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects of ancient religions.

Sacrifice is at the heart of Christian wisdom about love. Jesus' teaching that one must "lose one's life to save it" reveals a paradoxical relationship between self-sacrifice and self-realization. The invitation to imitate Jesus Christ, and to give of oneself to other, inspires great acts of love. Yet the veneration of sacrifice for its own sake can validate painful losses that are no longer life-giving. Faced with such ambiguities, and struggling to discern the boundaries of giving, Christians need a new interpretation of the symbol of sacrifice. The Paradox of Christian Sacrifice explores a revised understanding of authentic sacrifice in terms of dedication to others for the reign of God. Sacrificial self-giving becomes a means to Christian identity-a paradoxical way to find life in the fullest. Ultimately, sacrificial love is not only an imitation of the cross, but an image of the creativity of God. Book jacket.