Religions of the World

This collection provides a rich, multilayered analysis of a long-neglected branch of early Christian apocryphal literature that examines the relationship between tradition and redaction, uses of language, and the fluid border between literary criticism and motif analysis.

The phenomenon of ancestors is common to all humans, but while prominent in most indigenous traditions, it has been suppressed in western cultures. This volume articulates crucial issues in the study of post-contact religion through the themes of the ancestral ordering of the world, intense personal attachments to forebears, and the catastrophes of colonization.

Place and orientation are important aspects of human experience. 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.