What Comes to an End When a “Religion” Comes to an “End”? Reflections on a Historiographical Trope and Ancient Mediterranean History of Religion

Abstract This article argues that the neglect of narratives about the end of religious traditions is due to a complex entanglement of our positions as historical narrators and specifics of the sources for histories of religions, that is of emic and academic narrators. Typically, academic histories a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rüpke, Jörg 1962- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2021
In: Numen
Year: 2021, Volume: 68, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 204-229
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Mediterranean area / Religion / Decline / Religious change
IxTheo Classification:AA Study of religion
AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AF Geography of religion
AG Religious life; material religion
BC Ancient Orient; religion
BE Greco-Roman religions
Further subjects:B group formation
B dimensions of religion
B imperial collapse
B Historiography
B Narrative
B Religious Change
B Religions
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Rights Information:CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Description
Summary:Abstract This article argues that the neglect of narratives about the end of religious traditions is due to a complex entanglement of our positions as historical narrators and specifics of the sources for histories of religions, that is of emic and academic narrators. Typically, academic histories are not only based on emic narratives, but also tend to accept their conceptual frameworks with regard to the unities of description. It will be shown that such an entanglement has consequences for the neglect of the end of religious practices or groups. Against this background an analytical grid for change and discontinuation of different dimensions of “religion” will be offered and exemplified in an analysis of the “end of Paganism” in the late ancient Roman Empire. The most problematic implications of such narratives, the article will argue, are assumptions about the coherence of the religious protagonists brought center-stage.
ISSN:1568-5276
Access:Open Access
Contains:Enthalten in: Numen
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341621