All Religion Is Inter-Religion: Engaging the Work of Steven M. Wasserstrom

Description

All Religion Is Inter-Religion analyses the ways inter-religious relations have contributed both historically and philosophically to the constructions of the category of “religion” as a distinct subject of study. Regarded as contemporary classics, Steven M. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion (1999) and Between Muslim and Jew (1995), provided a theoretical reorientation for the study of religion away from hierophanies and ultimacy, and toward lived history and deep pluralism. This book distills and systematizes this reorientation into “nine theses on the study of religion”. Drawing on these theses, as well as Wasserstrom’s opus more generally, a distinguished group of colleagues and former students demonstrate that religions can and must be understood through encounters in real time and space and through the complex relations they create and maintain between people, as well as between people and their pasts. The book also features an afterword by Wasserstrom himself, which poses nine riddles to students of religion based on his personal experiences working on religion at the turn of the 21st century. Cover Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments 1 Introducing Wasserstrom’s Work on Religion Kambiz GhaneaBassiri 2 Nine Theses on the Study of Religion Steven M. Wasserstrom Part One Conversing 3 Anxiety, Lament, and the Language of Silence: Poetic Redemption andGnostic Alienation Elliot R. Wolfson 4 The Study of Religion in a Postmetaphysical Age: Philosophical andPolitical Reflections Peter E. Gordon 5 Taxonomy Is Epistemology: Theorizing Religion and HermeticismPolythetically with Wasserstrom’s Theses Paul Robertson 6 Metrosophy: Rereading Walter Benjamin in Light of Religionafter Religion Jeremy F. Walton 7 “La Perversión de la Cábala Judía”: Gershom Scholem andAnti-Kabbalistic Polemic in the Argentine Catholic Nationalism ofJulio Meinvielle Jeremy P. Brown Part Two Mediating 8 Before Religion? The Zoroastrian Concept of Daēnā and Two Mythsabout It Bruce Lincoln 9 Nag Hammadi at Eranos: Rediscovering Gnosticism among theHistorians of Religions J. Gregory Given 10 Where the Center of the Rupture Is Called Judaism: Maurice Blanchotand Religion after Religion Kirsten Collins 11 Abrahamic Encounters in the Weimar Wüste Ruchama Johnston-Bloom 12 Far Too Close: Religion and Reality in the Work of Erich Auerbach andMuhammad Asad Sam Kigar Part Three Rethinking 13 Is Sethian Gnosticism an Abrahamic Religion? Abraham, Sodom, andthe Parabiblical in Ancient Gnostic Literature Dylan M. Burns 14 The Repentant Magician: “Esoteric Intimacies” and the Enchantment ofReligious Difference Noah Salomon 15 On the Possibility of Jewish Politics in Our Time: Scholem, Exile, andEarly Modern Transformations Anne Oravetz Albert 16 Medieval Spanish Jews and the Dangers of Wealth Andrew D. Berns 17 Luksus and the Hasidic Critique of Postwar American Capitalism Michael Casper Epilogue: Nine Riddles Steven M. Wasserstrom Notes Publications of Steven M. Wasserstrom Bibliography Index