The I.

General Introduction:

historica
B
efore to start to dive into the main objective of this
article, it is necessary to begin by asking the following
question; what is the history of religion as a term?

l Briefly, it is a disciplinary term and an academic field to study

religions within history. It analyses, explains, describes and
interprets religion historically and addresses other scientific
develop disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, philology,
anthropology and psychology. The nature of the history of
religions is multidisciplinary because it tries to answer all the
ment of psychological, sociological, anthropological, and
philosophical questions about religious issues.

History The history of religions deals with religions as a religious

deed and analyses all the religious aspects and their historical
development. The history of religions does not teach religions

of as theology does and does not transmit religious beliefs but

studies and analyses the religions historically regarding the
roots, origins, contexts, environments, events and cultures.But

Religion how the history of religions emerges as an academic field?

How has it progressed until nowadays?

s II. The pre-academic study of religions

In the ancient world and in the Middle Ages thevarious
approaches to religion grew out of attempts either to criticize or to defendparticular systems
and to interpret religion in harmony with changes in knowledge.

Greco-Roman:

To start with Greece and its thinkers poets such as Hesiod1 (700 BCE) and philosophers2who
dealt with gods and myths, we can even call this a criticism in modern words. Plato3 and
Xenophanes shared the same thoughts on traditional myths. Both saw it as immoral and
criticized it in a way.

Thehistorian Herodotus (5th century BCE) attempted to solve the problem of theplurality of
cults by identifying foreign deities with Greek deities (e.g., those of theEgyptian Amon with
Zeus). This kind of syncretism was widely employed in themerging of Greek and Roman

1
Hesiod , a poet who rather laboriously put togetherthe genealogies of the gods. His work remains an
important source book of ancientmyth.
2
The rise of speculative philosophy among the Ionian philosophers, especiallyThales of Miletus, Heracleitus,
and Anaximander, led to a more critical and morerationalistic treatment of the gods.
3
This theme of criticism of the myths wastaken over and elaborated in the 4th century BCE by Plato.

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culture in the Roman Empire (e.g., Zeus as the Romangod Jupiter). Much of the skepticism
about the gods in the ancient world wasconcerned with the older traditional religions, whether
of Greece or Rome.

The Middle Ages:

There were similar problems of the Greeks and Romans during the spread of Christianity into
Europe and some places near to the Roman Empire, Meanwhile, Islamic theology had had an
impact on Western Christianity, Meanwhile the theology of Muslims upon medieval
Scholastic philosophy, in which the values of both reason andrevelation were maintained.
Muslim knowledge of other religions was moreadvanced than European knowledge, notably
in the work of the theologian Ibn Ḥazm(994–1064).

III. The Renaissance era and its reformation:

The rise of the Renaissance movement has a strong impact on the European culture as whole
through the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman art, literature and philosophy, thence as
boundto set uptensions between Christians about paganism. Those tensions were being
attempted to be resolved by numerous scholars among them HumanistGiovanni Boccaccio4
(1313–75). During this period, there was a clear need of comparative approach within the
analyses of a religion, and that was obvious in the statement of The Dutch Humanist
Desiderius Erasmus5 (1469–1536). We can mention the arguments about idolatry, when the
Protestant Reformers’ attack on idolatry within the Roman CatholicChurch and by their
comparison between what they took to be the Christianity of theNew Testament and the
religion of Rome.The need for a comparative treatment of religion became clear, and this
needprepared the way for more modern developments, to sum up that, the inquiries of the
16th to 18th centurythus initiated an accumulation of data about other cultures that stimulated
studies ofthe religions of other cultures.

IV. Early modern era:

The late 17th and 18th centuries are remarked by the usage ofrationalism of religions such as
theScottish philosopherDavid Hume (1711–76) gave another account in his Natural History of
Religion,which reflected the growing rationalism of the epoch.6 This rationalist period was
remarked by the rejection of the dogmas of both Christians and Pagans in the name of Natural
Religions and Deism, The idea was developed by Voltaire espoused an anticlerical deism and

4
HOW? In a medieval way by extensively allegorizing the ancient myths.
5
However, went farther in stating that the ancient thinkers had a direct knowledge of the highest truth and in
comparing them favorably with Scholastic theologians.
6
For Hume, original polytheism was the result of a naïve anthropomorphism (conceiving the divine in human
form) in the assignment of causes to natural events.

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Denis Diderot (1713–84). E. Kant7 explained his usage of rationalism which it was based on
ethics and morals.

Moreover, the first beginnings of the development of Oriental studies and of ethnology and
anthropology were making available moredata about religion, though discussion in the 18th
century continued to conceive religions other than Judaism and Christianity largely in terms
of the paganism of the ancient world.

V. The early 19th century:

The term "history of religions" employed by the University of Chicago historians of religions
is an attempt to translate what Max Muller, in 1867, called Religionswissenschaft.

Muller's "science of religions" can be translated as a "comparative study of religions," but

most historians of religions see Religionswissenschaft as both a descriptive and an analytic
discipline. Its point of departure is "the historically given religions".

Eliade explains that historians of religions are divided between two divergent but
complementary method ontological orientations: One group concentrate primarily on the
characteristic structures of religious phenomena, and the other choose to investigate their
historical context. The former seeks to understand the essence of religion, the latter to
discover and communicate its history.

Due to some new discoveries, Humans started thinking and analyzing religions in scientific
way. The discovery of the new world, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the translation of hieroglyphs,
events that some like Philippe Bourgeaud consider as stimulator events that led to the
appearance of a critical approach to religions

In the 19th century, there were other scholars—mainly theologians and philosophers—in
European universities. Occasionally more or less regular lectures on the history of religions.
But it wasn't until the 1870s that the topic started make yourself feel at universities in Europe
and North America. German-English linguist (Friedrich) Max Müller (1823-1900) this
breakthrough is generally considered the most laudable. Although He was never a professor
of religious history, he insisted numerous lectures and publications from the 1850s to the
present sparking interest in the topic, not only in academia, But also in a larger contemporary
audience. His lectures at the Royal Institution in London in 1870, entitled Introduction to the
Science of Religion. These various movements were supplemented by the growth of scientific
history, archaeology, anthropology, and other sciences. The rise of the social sciences
provided for the firsttime systematic knowledge of cultures worldwide. During the 20th
century, the history of religions developed from a specific historical discipline
(Religionsgeschichte] to a broader interdisciplinary field of research. There is no longer any
"total" approach to religion in general or even though to just one religion in particular.

7
Kant held that all humans, in their awareness of and reverence for the categorical imperative (i.e., thenotion
that one must act as though what one does can become a universal law), sharein the one religion and that the
preeminence of Christianity lay in the conspicuous.