- Ancient Religions
- Sarah Iles Johnston, General Editor
- Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean: itinerant charismatic practitioners peddled their skills as healers, purifiers, cursers, and initiators; and vessels decorated with illustrations of myths traveled with them. This collection of essays, drawn from the groundbreaking reference work Religion in the Ancient World, offers an expansive, comparative perspective on this complex spiritual world.
- Paperback 2007
- Experiences of Place
- Edited by Mary N. MacDonald
- Place and orientation are important aspects of human experience. Place evokes geography and culture and conjures up history and myth. Place is not only a particular physical location but an idea, a mental construction that captures and directs the human relationship to the world.The distinguished contributors to this volume invite us to reflect on the significance of places, real and imagined, in the religious traditions they study and on how places are known, imagined, remembered, and struggled for.
- Paperback 2003 / Hardcover 2003
- Localizing Paradise
- D. Max Moerman
- Although located far from the populated centers of traditional Japan, the three Kumano shrines occupied a central position in the Japanese religious landscape. This book encompasses both the historical and the ideological Kumano--not only a stage for the performance of asceticism and pilgrimage, but also a place of the imagination, a topic of literary and artistic representation. By studying Kumano's particular religious landscape, we can better understand the larger, common religious landscape of premodern Japan.
- Hardcover 2006
- Pilgrimage
- Simon Coleman
- John Elsner
- This book is a fascinating guide through the vast and varied cultural territory that pilgrimages have covered across the ages. The first book to look at the phenomenon and experience of pilgrimage through the multiple lenses of history, religion, sociology, anthropology, and art history, this sumptuously illustrated volume explores the full richness of sacred travel.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1997
- Religions of the Ancient World
- Edited by Sarah Iles Johnston
- Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean. New gods encountered in foreign lands by merchants and conquerors were sometimes taken home to be adapted and adopted. A full understanding of this complex spiritual world unfolds in Religions of the Ancient World, the first basic reference work that collects and organizes available information to offer an expansive, comparative perspective.
- Hardcover 2004
- The Varieties of Religious Experience
- William James
- Introduction by John E. Smith
- The Varieties of Religious Experience, first delivered as the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, was published in 1902 and quickly established itself as a classic. It ranks with its great predecessor, The Principles of Psychology, as one of William James's masterworks.
- Hardcover 1985
- What Is Gnosticism?
- Karen L. King
- A distinctive Christian heresy? A competitor of burgeoning Christianity? A pre-Christian folk religion traceable to "Oriental syncretism"? How do we account for the disparate ideas, writings, and practices that have been placed under the Gnostic rubric? King's book is both a thorough and innovative introduction to the twentieth-century study of Gnosticism and a revealing exploration of the concept of heresy as a tool in forming religious identity.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005