Scholars Are Demons, Not Gods

Meta-Theoretical Reflections Sparked by Bruce Lincoln’s Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars

Authors

  • Gabriel Levy Norwegian University of Science and Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v42i2.7

Keywords:

Bruce Lincoln, religion, myth, discourse, power

Abstract

The book is made up of a series of conference papers and previously published essays. No attempt is made at relating the essays, so the reader gets no real sense of structure for the book as a whole or sense of what the author intends the book to accomplish, other than a kind of Bruce Lincoln’s “Recent Hits.” This is not necessarily a critique, unless one thinks that explicitly stated coherence is a requirement of scholarly books. If a red thread can be traced in this very rich assortment it must be found already (and perhaps only) in the title, where we find that the book is about the relationship between Gods, demons, priests, and scholars. The book is very much about the discursive positionality of scholars of religion in relation to their object they study.

Author Biography

  • Gabriel Levy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

    Department of Religious Studies Associate Professor

References

Brandom, Robert. 2008. Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brandom, Robert. 2000. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Davidson, Donald. 2001. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Foucault, Michel and Noam Chomsky. 2006. The ChomskyFoucault Debate: On Human Nature. New York: New Press.

Levy, Gabriel. 2006. “Biblical Prophecy in Recent American Theological Politics.” Postscripts 2: 59–85.

Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Weber, Max. 1919. Wissenschaft als Beruf. München und Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot. http:// de.wikisource.org/wiki/Wissenschaft_als_Beruf.

Published

2013-04-03

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Levy, G. (2013). Scholars Are Demons, Not Gods: Meta-Theoretical Reflections Sparked by Bruce Lincoln’s Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars. Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 42(2), 7-12. https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v42i2.7