Rediscovering Religion and Spirituality Through Modern Scholarship
What are we up to here?
A great deal of the content on this website is based on examinations of the stories in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. But as scholarly work on spiritual and religious matters has grown dramatically in the 20th and 21st centuries, there has been a prodigious growth in scholarly work, examining many new aspects of Religion and Spirituality, as well as responding to the many new findings of ancient texts, and archeology.
So we needed a new category of studies on this website and we decided to label it as “Rediscovering Religion and Spirituality through Modern Scholarship”.
So - Welcome to this new category on this website.
To cover this very large and complex subject we will first present a complete “Table of Contents”. And in that table, we will highlight some of the key sources (mostly books by prominent modern scholars) that we draw information from.
It is important to say as we dig into this that to those who have a strong traditional view of their religion, this information might be threatening to their beliefs. But what cannot be ignored is that the amount of information presently available to us has dramatically changed due to a combination of 1. Many new findings, both archeological and text related, that have been made in the 20th and 21st centuries; 2. The arrival of computer technology and a world wide web of information that never existed before, and 3. The extraordinary growth of universities around the world. Many which include modern scholars on religion and spirituality.
And I will argue that we need to study all of this new information to learn more of how ancient Judaism and Christianity actually evolved, as well as how the modern views of those religions have changed in today’s times.
And all through the table of contents you will see references to KEY SOURCES. This refers to to significant books by modern scholars that are used in this study
So let us begin by looking at the Table of Contents:
Rediscovering Religion and Spirituality through Modern Scholarship
Unit 1: Laying the Foundations
Session 1: What Is Religion? What Is Spirituality?
Definitions, overlaps, and distinctions; the historical emergence of religion as a category; the rise of “spiritual but not religious” movements.
Key Sources:
· - Karen Armstrong, *The Case for God*
· - Mircea Eliade, *The Sacred and the Profane*
· - Charles Taylor, *A Secular Age*
Session 2: The Origins of Religion in Prehistory
Cognitive and anthropological theories of religious emergence; shamanism, animism, and early ritual; burials, cave art, and sacred landscapes.
Key Sources:
· - Pascal Boyer, *Religion Explained*
· - Elaine Pagels, *The Gnostic Gospels*
· - David Lewis-Williams, *The Mind in the Cave*
Unit 2: Religion in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean
Session 3: The Ancient Religious Landscape of the Middle East
Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian religions; polytheism, divine kingship, temple cults; comparative mythology.
Key Sources:
· - Tikva Frymer-Kensky, *In the Wake of the Goddesses*
· - Thorkild Jacobsen, *The Treasures of Darkness*
· - The *Epic of Gilgamesh*
Session 4: Archaeology and the Hebrew Bible
Discoveries at Ugarit, Qumran, Lachish, Megiddo; the historical David and Solomon debates; how archaeological findings support or challenge biblical accounts.
Key Sources:
· - Israel Finkelstein & Neil Silberman, *The Bible Unearthed*
· - William Dever, *Did God Have a Wife?*
· - Dead Sea Scrolls
Session 5: The Emergence of Monotheism
From henotheism to radical monotheism; the role of prophets and exile; the influence of Zoroastrianism and Persian religion.
Key Sources:
· - Mark S. Smith, *The Origins of Biblical Monotheism*
· - Peter Machinist (essays on Persian influence on Judaism)
· - The Book of Isaiah (selected passages)
Unit 3: The Jesus Movement, Early Christianity, and Competing Gospels
Session 6: Jesus in His Jewish Context
Second Temple Judaism; messianism and apocalypticism; Jesus as a prophet, teacher, and eschatological figure.
Key Sources:
· - N.T. Wright, *Jesus and the Victory of God*
· - Geza Vermes, *Jesus the Jew*
· - The Synoptic Gospels (selected readings)
Session 7: Lost and Alternative Christianities
Gnosticism, the Gospel of Thomas, and diversity in early Christianity; the formation of the canon and what was excluded; the early church’s theological battles.
Key Sources:
· - Bart Ehrman, *Lost Christianities*
· - Marvin Meyer (ed.), *The Nag Hammadi Scriptures*
· - Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary
Unit 4: Islam and Later Developments
Session 8: Islam and the Abrahamic Traditions
The Qur'an in conversation with Jewish and Christian texts; early Islamic history and the spread of empire; modern reinterpretations of the Qur'an.
Key Sources:
· - Reza Aslan, *No god but God*
· - Carl Ernst, *How to Read the Qur'an*
· - The Qur'an (selected Surahs)
Session 9: Mysticism Across Traditions
Sufism, Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, and Vedanta; experiential spirituality vs institutional religion; common mystical themes: unity, silence, love, ego-death.
Key Sources:
· - Evelyn Underhill, *Mysticism*
· - Andrew Harvey (ed.), *The Essential Mystics*
· - Rupert Spira or Eckhart Tolle (modern nondual insights)
Unit 5: Religion in the Modern and Postmodern Worlds
Session 10: The Enlightenment and the Rise of Skepticism
Rationalism, secularism, and the critique of religion; religion and science: conflict or conversation? Darwin, Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche.
Key Sources:
· - Richard Holloway, *Godless Morality*
· - Sigmund Freud, *The Future of an Illusion*
· - John Haught, *Science and Faith*
Session 11: Religion, Power, and Liberation
Feminist, Black, and Liberation theologies; postcolonial critiques of religion; religion’s role in both oppression and justice movements.
Key Sources:
· - Gustavo Gutiérrez, *A Theology of Liberation*
· - Delores Williams, *Sisters in the Wilderness*
· - James Cone, *The Cross and the Lynching Tree*
Session 12: The Future of Religion and Spirituality
New religious movements, global spiritual hybrids; environmental spirituality and interfaith cooperation; technology, AI, and digital religion.
Key Sources:
· - Diana Butler Bass, *Christianity After Religion*
· - Yuval Noah Harari, *Homo Deus*
- Pew Research studies on religious trends