Olav Hammer – författare

"The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe" surveys the major religious currents of Europe before Christianity - the first continental religion with hegemonic ambition - wiped out most local religions. The evidence - whether archaeological or written - is notoriously difficult to interpret, and the variety of religions documented by the sources and the range of languages used are bewildering. The "Handbook" brings together leading authorities on pre-Christian religious history to provide a state-of-the-art survey. The first section of the book covers the Prehistoric period, from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age. The second section covers the period since writing systems began. Ranging across the Mediterranean and Northern, Celtic and Slavic Europe, the essays assess the archaeological and textual evidence. Dispersed archaeological remains and biased outside sources constitute our main sources of information, so the complex task of interpreting these traces is explained for each case. The "Handbook" also aims to highlight the plurality of religion in ancient Europe: the many ways in which it is expressed, notably in discourse, action, organization, and material culture; how it is produced and maintained by different people with different interests; how communities always connect with or disassociate from adjunct communities and how their beliefs and rituals are shaped by these relationships. The "Handbook" will be invaluable to anyone interested in ancient History and also to scholars and students of Religion, Anthropology, Archaeology, and Classical Studies.

New religions emerge as distinct entities in the religious landscape when innovations are introduced by a charismatic leader or a schismatic group leaves its parent organization. New religious movements (NRMs) often present novel doctrines and advocate unfamiliar modes of behavior, and have therefore often been perceived as controversial. NRMs have, however, in recent years come to be treated in the same way as established religions, that is, as complex cultural phenomena involving myths, rituals and canonical texts. This Companion discusses key features of NRMs from a systematic, comparative perspective, summarizing results of forty years of research. The volume addresses NRMs that have caught media attention, including movements such as Scientology, New Age, the Neopagans, the Sai Baba movement and Jihadist movements active in a post-9/11 context. An essential resource for students of religious studies, the history of religion, sociology, anthropology and the psychology of religion.

The dictionary definition of tradition refers to beliefs and practices that have been transmitted from generation to generation, however, 'tradition' can rest simply on the claim that certain cultural elements are rooted in the past. Claim and documented historical reality need not overlap. In the domain of religion, historically verifiable traditions coexist with recent innovations whose origins are spuriously projected back into time. This book examines the phenomenon of 'invented traditions' in religions ranging in time from Zoroastrianism to Scientology, and geographically from Tibet to North America and Europe. The various contributions, together with an introduction that surveys the field, use individual case studies to address questions such as the rationale for creating historical tradition for one's doctrines and rituals; the mechanisms by which hitherto unknown texts can enter an existing corpus; and issues of acceptance and scepticism in the reception of dubious texts.

New religions emerge as distinct entities in the religious landscape when innovations are introduced by a charismatic leader or a schismatic group leaves its parent organization. New religious movements (NRMs) often present novel doctrines and advocate unfamiliar modes of behavior, and have therefore often been perceived as controversial. NRMs have, however, in recent years come to be treated in the same way as established religions, that is, as complex cultural phenomena involving myths, rituals and canonical texts. This Companion discusses key features of NRMs from a systematic, comparative perspective, summarizing results of forty years of research. The volume addresses NRMs that have caught media attention, including movements such as Scientology, New Age, the Neopagans, the Sai Baba movement and Jihadist movements active in a post-9/11 context. An essential resource for students of religious studies, the history of religion, sociology, anthropology and the psychology of religion.

The dictionary definition of tradition refers to beliefs and practices that have been transmitted from generation to generation, however, 'tradition' can rest simply on the claim that certain cultural elements are rooted in the past. Claim and documented historical reality need not overlap. In the domain of religion, historically verifiable traditions coexist with recent innovations whose origins are spuriously projected back into time. This book examines the phenomenon of 'invented traditions' in religions ranging in time from Zoroastrianism to Scientology, and geographically from Tibet to North America and Europe. The various contributions, together with an introduction that surveys the field, use individual case studies to address questions such as the rationale for creating historical tradition for one's doctrines and rituals; the mechanisms by which hitherto unknown texts can enter an existing corpus; and issues of acceptance and scepticism in the reception of dubious texts.

Few, if any, individuals have had such a profound influence on Western culture as Jesus, even though not a single detail of his life or teaching can be confirmed with certainty. This lack of reliable biographical data has left his life open to broad interpretation. Jesus, gnostic and apocryphal sources insist, never truly died on the cross since he was a divine being, whose human frame was an illusion. Muslim sources affirm that Jesus was a prophet of God and will return at the end of time. Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels formulated racial theories in which Jesus was a redeemer for Aryans only, while the Renaissance polymath Guillaume Postel was convinced that Christ had returned as a Venetian woman. This book explores these and other views without taking sides in any theological arguments and presents research on a variety of alternative Christologies.

This Element provides an introduction to a number of less frequently explored approaches based upon the comparative study of religions. New religions convey origin myths, present their particular views of history, and craft Endtime scenarios. Their members carry out a vast and diverse array of ritual activities. They produce large corpuses of written texts and designate a subset of these as a sacrosanct canon. They focus their attention on material objects that can range from sacred buildings to objects from the natural world that are treated in ritualized fashion. The reason for this fundamental similarity between older and newer religions is briefly explored in terms of the cognitive processes that underlie religious concepts and practices. A final section returns to the issue of how such shared processes take specific shapes in the context of modern, Western societies.

The scholarly study of new religious movements focuses on the contemporary period, but religious innovation is nothing new. This Element explores a historical epoch characterized by a multitude of emergent religious concepts and practices - the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A precondition for the intense degree of religious innovation during this time was a high level of cultural exchange. Religious elements crossed porous cultural borders and were adapted to suit new purposes. The resulting amalgams were presented in a vast corpus of texts, largely produced by a literate elite. Charismatic leaders played a particularly important role in creating new religious options and were described in genres that were infused with ideological agendas. Novel religious developments were accepted by the Roman authorities unless suspected of undermining the social order. The rise of one of the many new religions of the period, Christianity, ultimately changed the religious landscape in profound ways.

This Element provides an introduction to a number of less frequently explored approaches based upon the comparative study of religions. New religions convey origin myths, present their particular views of history, and craft Endtime scenarios. Their members carry out a vast and diverse array of ritual activities. They produce large corpuses of written texts and designate a subset of these as a sacrosanct canon. They focus their attention on material objects that can range from sacred buildings to objects from the natural world that are treated in ritualized fashion. The reason for this fundamental similarity between older and newer religions is briefly explored in terms of the cognitive processes that underlie religious concepts and practices. A final section returns to the issue of how such shared processes take specific shapes in the context of modern, Western societies.

Few, if any, individuals have had such a profound influence on Western culture as Jesus, even though not a single detail of his life or teaching can be confirmed with certainty. This lack of reliable biographical data has left his life open to broad interpretation. Jesus, gnostic and apocryphal sources insist, never truly died on the cross since he was a divine being, whose human frame was an illusion. Muslim sources affirm that Jesus was a prophet of God and will return at the end of time. Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels formulated racial theories in which Jesus was a redeemer for Aryans only, while the Renaissance polymath Guillaume Postel was convinced that Christ had returned as a Venetian woman. This book explores these and other views without taking sides in any theological arguments and presents research on a variety of alternative Christologies.

"The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe" surveys the major religious currents of Europe before Christianity - the first continental religion with hegemonic ambition - wiped out most local religions. The evidence - whether archaeological or written - is notoriously difficult to interpret, and the variety of religions documented by the sources and the range of languages used are bewildering. The "Handbook" brings together leading authorities on pre-Christian religious history to provide a state-of-the-art survey. The first section of the book covers the Prehistoric period, from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age. The second section covers the period since writing systems began. Ranging across the Mediterranean and Northern, Celtic and Slavic Europe, the essays assess the archaeological and textual evidence. Dispersed archaeological remains and biased outside sources constitute our main sources of information, so the complex task of interpreting these traces is explained for each case. The "Handbook" also aims to highlight the plurality of religion in ancient Europe: the many ways in which it is expressed, notably in discourse, action, organization, and material culture; how it is produced and maintained by different people with different interests; how communities always connect with or disassociate from adjunct communities and how their beliefs and rituals are shaped by these relationships. The "Handbook" will be invaluable to anyone interested in ancient History and also to scholars and students of Religion, Anthropology, Archaeology, and Classical Studies.

This volume deals with the transformation of religious creativity in the late modern West. Its point of departure is a set of esoteric beliefs, from Theosophy to the New Age. It shows how these traditions have adapted to the cultural givens of each successive epoch.The claims of each movement have been buttressed by drawing on various structural characteristics of late modernity. The advance of science has resulted in attempts to claim scientific status for religious beliefs. Globalization has given rise to massive loans from other cultures, but also to various strategies to radically reinterpret foreign elements. Individualism has led to an increasing reliance on experience as a source of legitimacy. The analytical tools applied to understanding religious modernization shed light on changes that are fundamentally reshaping many religious traditions.This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

In its historical development from late antiquity to the present, western esotericism has repeatedly been the issue of polemical discourse. This volume engages the polemical structures that underlie both the identities within and the controversy about esoteric currents in European history. From Jewish and Christian kabbalah through heretical discourse and interconfessional polemics in early modernity to the legitimization of esoteric identity in modern culture, the 12 chapters, accompanied by an editors’ introduction, provide a cornucopia of relevant cases that are interpreted in a framework of polemical discourse and ‘Othering’. This volume sheds new light on the ultimately polemical structure of western esotericism and thus opens new vistas for further research into esoteric discourse.

There has been a significant but little-noticed aspect of the interface between science and religion, namely the widespread tendency of religions to appeal to science in support of their truth claims. Though the appeal to science is most evident in more recent religions like Christian Science and Scientology, no major faith tradition is exempt from this pattern. Members of almost every religion desire to see their ‘truths’ supported by the authority of science – especially in the midst of the present historical period, when all of the comforting old certainties seem problematic and threatened. The present collection examines this pattern in a wide variety of different religions and spiritual movements, and demonstrates the many different ways in which religions appeal to the authority of science. The result is a wide-ranging and uniquely compelling study of how religions adapt their message to one of the major challenges presented by the contemporary world.

Few religious currents have been as influential as the Theosophical. Yet few currents have been so under-researched, and the Brill Handbook of the Theosophical Current thus represents pioneering research. A first section surveys the main people and events involved in the Theosophical Society from its inception to today, and outlines the Theosophical worldview. A second, substantial section covers most significant religions to emerge in the wake of the Theosophical Society - Anthroposophy, the Point Loma community, the I AM religious activity, the Summit Lighthouse Movement, the New Age, theosophical UFO religions, and numerous others. Finally, the interaction of the Theosophical current with contemporary culture - including gender relations, art, popular fiction, historiography, and science - are discussed at length.

Sexualitet, erotik och religion är ämnen som angår oss alla. Ibland ställs de i motsats till varandra: sex och erotik är världsligt medan religion tillhör en andlig sfär. Men så är det naturligtvis långt ifrån alltid – tänk bara på den passionerade erotiska poesi som finns i världens religioner, från sumeriska dikter till Höga visan i Bibeln och persisk kärlekslyrik.I Sex – för Guds skull diskuteras bland annat olika religioners syn på kroppen och föreställningar om sex före äktenskapet, homosexualitet och celibat. På vilka sätt har världsreligionerna satt upp gränser för att kontrollera sexualiteten? Författarna tar också upp frågan om sakral sexualitet som en spegling av den gudomliga världen och ger exempel på attityder till sexualitet inom nya religiösa rörelser.Sex – för Guds skull vänder sig till studerande i religionsvetenskap, sexologi, antropologi och etnologi. Boken är också av intresse för den som i sitt yrke behöver kunskap om olika religioners inställning till sex och erotik, till exempel journalister, socionomer och vårdpersonal.

Istanbul, Jerusalem, New York, Madrid. Vår omvärld bubblar och sjuder av konflikter och kolliderande intressen med kopplingar till religiösa frågor som inte alltid är begripliga för sekulariserade nordbor. I denna antologi gör religionsvetare, -historiker och -sociologer gemensam sak med statsvetare och idéhistoriker för att ge oss ett nödvändigt religiöst och historiskt perspektiv på dagens politiska verklighet. Det är verkligen inte ett nytt problem: alltsedan antiken har religion använts för att legitimera makt, markera identitet och egga till motstånd. Boken gör ett tvärsnitt genom tid och geografi, för att belysa hur religionens kraft i politiska frågor ser ut på olika håll i världen: från kristdemokratins Tyskland till återupplivade indianska religioner i nordamerikanska reservat, från Napoleons strävanden att "civilisera" Egypten till sekulariseringsprocessen i dagens Turkiet.

En våg av nyandlighet, new age, sveper sedan ett par årtionden fram över Sverige och den övriga västvärlden. Stora grupper av människor är intresserade av reinkarnation, healing, astrologi, UFO:n, meditation och mystik. På spaning efter helheten gavs ut första gången 1997 och var då något helt nytt: den första balanserade, populärvetenskapliga översikten över new age på svenska. Denna andra upplaga, som först utkom 2004, är grundligt reviderad för att ta hänsyn till den slående förändring som nyandligheten på senare år har genomgått. Från att ha varit ett intresse för en generation av sökare har new age allt mer införlivats som en självklar del av samtidskulturen. Dessutom tar boken hänsyn till den strida ström av kunskaper vi med tiden har fått om nyandligheten och dess plats i vårt samhälle. Den nya upplagan av På spaning efter helheten svarar liksom sin föregångare på de mest grundläggande frågorna: Vad ingår i de nyandliga strömningarna? Varifrån kommer idéerna? Var har den nyandliga världsbilden sin plats i det moderna samhället? Den är skriven för en bred allmänhet som är nyfiken på astrologins, parapsykologins eller alternativmedicinens stora uppsving. Olav Hammer är professor i religionshistoria vid Syddansk Universitet i Odense, Danmark.

Att definiera sig som andlig men inte religiös har blivit allt vanligare under efterkrigstiden och är en inställning vi ofta förknippar med new age eller nyandlighet. Medan religion för tankarna till förstelnade institutioner, rigida normer och yttre auktoritet, ses andlighet istället som ett individuellt och kreativt förhållande till högre makter och olika religiösa traditioner. Med detta är inte nödvändigtvis någonting nytt, utan snarare ett förhållande till religion som vuxit fram under lång tid. I boken spåras dessa tendenser tillbaka genom historien. Bokens olika författare erbjuder religions- och naturvetenskapliga perspektiv på mystiska, esoteriska och andliga traditioner, med fokus på det samtida Europa och Nordamerika. Såväl forskningen som samtida företeelser skärskådas. Bokens tio författare är framstående forskare i religionshistoria och andra ämnen, verksamma vid universitet och högskolor i Sverige och utomlands.