Some Theories about the Origins of Religion
Intersection of "Myth" and "Religion"
Rudolf Otto (1917): Myth as "the vestibule at the threshold of the real religious feeling, an
earliest stirring of the numinous consciousness."
Northrop Frye (1963): Myth as "a story in which some of the chief characters are gods."
Contributions of Poetry
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)
myth as an expression of the childhood experiences of the human race
"Poetic wisdom" as a
conception of a science of mythology. Mythic narrative
as having a logic of its own that is achieved through the power of imagination,
or fantasia, a primordial power of the mind
through which the world and human experience are first given order.
Herder and Heyne. 18th century.
Myth is creative. By projecting himself into his environment,
man finds truyh. "Poets made the myths and gave them character." Myths as religious and poetic inspiration.
A reaction to rationalism. Growing suspicion of reason.
Use of metaphor.
Linguistics
Sir William Jones.
late 18th century.
Discovered the linguistic and cultural links between European and Indian sky deities
led to discovery of
Indo-European. The god in all of these languages is called
"He who shines, father":
GREEK |
LATIN |
SANSKRIT |
GERMAN |
Zeus pater |
Jupiter |
Dyaus pitr |
Tiu Vater |
Scientific Study of Myth and Religion
Karl
Otfreid Muller 1825
Muller agreed with Tylor that religion began
as spirit worship. But he rejected Tylor's view that the earliest people
believed spirits dwelled in nature. Instead, Muller suggested that prehistoric
people thought that the forces of nature themselves had human qualities, such as
good or bad temper. People thus transformed these forces into deities. In this
way, Muller explained the earliest belief in gods.
Archaeology
Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans. Late 19th/early 20th centuries
Their work at Troy and Mycenae (Schliemann) and Knossos (Evans) revealed the cultural
antecedents of Greek mythology, religion, and culture in earlier, Aegean civilizations (e.g.,
Minoan in Crete, pre-Helladic on Greek mainland).
Anthropology
Spencer (1876) Ancestor worship as the root of every religion
Edward Tylor (1871): Religion as a "belief in Spiritual Beings", i.e.,
animism. Belief in soul in all aspects
of nature.
Max Muller. 1909
Nature Myth Sir James Frazer. The Golden Bough (1917) Comparative approach. Concept of dying vegetation
deity.
ritual: rites of passage, acts of propitiation, sacrifice, fertility rites
fetishism: worship of or reverence for inanimate objects such as lumps of wood or stones which
were believed to contain supernatural powers.
totemism: origin of humans from animals and hence worship of animals
Emile Durkheim
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
(1912)
A leading French sociologist of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century. who sought the origins of
religion in society, rather than in the individual human mind. Distinction
between things that are sacred and things that are profane.
Magic is not religion. Though it
may involve sacred things, magic is not real
religion, because it is done individually.
Rudolf
Otto (1869-1937)
German scholar of religion who believed
that an awareness of holiness and mystery lies at the heart of religious
experience and is therefore the basis for all religions. In his view, all
human beings possess the capacity for awe and recognize the power of the
sacred. For Otto, the holy is the true, the good, and the beautiful, a
representation of a basic and universal aspect of being human. Myth
as "the vestibule at the threshold of the real religious feeling, an
earliest stirring of the numinous consciousness."
This material was placed on the web by Professor Thomas J. Sienkewicz for his students at Monmouth College in
Monmouth, Illinois). If you have any questions, you can contact him at toms@monm.edu.
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