Theorizing Religions Past

Harvey Whitehouse is professor of anthropology and director of postgraduate studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Queen's University Belfast. He is co-director with E. Thomas Lawson of the newly established Centre for Cognition and Culture at Queen's University Belfast. He is currently the recipient of two major British Academy grants. His previous books include Inside the Cult: religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea (1995), Arguments and Icons: divergent modes of religiosity, (2000), The Debated Mind: evolutionary psychology versus ethnography (2001), and Modes of Religiosity: a cognitive theory of religious transmission (AltaMira, 2004). Luther H. Martin, professor of religion at the University of Vermont, is the author of Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction (1987), an editor of Theoretical Frameworks for the Study of Graeco-Roman Religions (2002), and author of numerous articles in this area of the history of religions. In addition, he is the author of numerous articles on theory and method in the study of religion, an editor of several volumes of essays on this topic, as well as an editor of a volume on The Academic Study of Religion During the Cold War (2001). He is currently engaged in research on Graeco-Roman religions from the perspective of cognitive science.

World famous authors examine the usefulness of Whitehouse's modes of religiosity theory against the backdrop of prehistorical, Graeco-Roman, and Christian religions. The result is an exhilarating panorama in the dynamics of history, cognition, and ritual.

• 1 Preface2 The Wedding of Psychology, Ethnography & History: Methodological Bigamy or Tripartite Free Love?3 Toward a Scientific History of ReligionsPart 4 The Archaeological Evidence5 From Ohalo to Çatalhöyük: The Development of Religiosity During the Early Prehistory of Western Asia, 20,000-7,000 BC6 No Need to Write this Down: Primary Emergence of the Doctrinal Mode in the Fifth and Fourth Millenia in Southwestern Iran7 Graeco-Roman Antiquity8 Old and New in Roman Religion: A Cognitive Account9 Four Men, Two Sticks, and a Whip: Image and Doctrine in Mithraic Ritual10 Syncretism and the Interaction of Modes of Religiosity: A Formative Perspective in "Gnostic Christian" Movements in Late Antiquity11 Christian Traditions12 Testing the Two Modes: Some Observations about Medieval Christianity13 Modes of Religiosity and Changes in Popular Religious Practices at the Time of the Reformation14 Modes of Religiosity and Types of Conversion in Medieval Europe and Modern Africa15 Corrupt Doctrine and Doctrinal Revival: On the Nature and Limits of the Modes Theory16 Critical Discussion17 Critical Reflections on the "Modes of Religiosity" Argument18 Theorizing Religions Past