Locating Theory in the Work of Jonathan Z. Smith (1938–2017)

DRUDGERY DIVINE: ON THE COMPARISON OF EARLY CHRISTIANITIES AND THE RELIGIONS OF LATE ANTIQUITY. By Jonathan Z. Smith. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Pp. xvi + 147. Paperback, $30.00. HARPERCOLLINS DICTIONARY OF RELIGION. By Jonathan Z. Smith (general editor). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995. Pp. 1200. Hardcover, $49.95. IMAGINING RELIGION: FROM BABYLON TO JONESTOWN. By Jonathan Z. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Pp. 180. Paperback, $34.00. MAP IS NOT TERRITORY. By Jonathan Z. Smith. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Pp. 352. Paperback, $37.00. RELATING RELIGION: ESSAYS IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION. By Jonathan Z. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pp. 424. Paperback, $37.00. “Religious Studies; Whiter (Wither) and Why.” By Jonathan Z. Smith. In ON TEACHING RELIGION. Edited by Christopher I. Lehrich. New York: Oxford University Press, 64–72. TO TAKE PLACE. By Jonathan Z. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Pp. 202. Paperback, $34.00. “To explain religion presupposes some theory about religion,” the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion tells us. It continues, “To have a theory of religion is to have some notion about what the object of religion is. The object of religion is not empirically given but theoretically constructed. The explanation of religion is a theoretical enterprise; it is the production of knowledge” (896). Though these words in the HarperCollins Dictionary are not attributed directly to Jonathan Z. Smith—indeed, none of its entries are attributed directly to anyone—I think that we can, with reasonable confidence, associate them rather closely with Smith, due to his position as general editor of the volume.2 Not only that, but as we shall soon see, these words bear a close relationship to his own explicit work—work to which we might pay a little attention if we are trying to understand what seems to have been his larger project in the study of religion. Let us stay for a moment with the capacious 1154-page HarperCollins Dictionary; indeed, its authority comes both from the sprawling list of well-known and well-respected scholars who are credited as its editors and contributors—not the least of whom is Smith—and from those scholars’ relative anonymity within the pages of the text itself. The virtually unattributed status of the text gives the rather misleading idea that each scholar has assented to the content of each entry (at least within their area), creating the impression of authoritative consensus. In fact, it is only in Smith’s introduction, and not in the entries themselves, that we learn that each area editor is responsible for the “major article designed to introduce the reader to both the subjects and the interpretive issues that characterize their fields of expertise” (xxii). Given this explanation, we can attribute the article introducing “The Study of Religion” to Hans Penner, editor of that area and colleague of Smith since 1965 (Smith 2004, xi). In his HarperCollins Dictionary article, Penner relies on the work of Peter Achinstein, writing that a theory is “the engine for the production of knowledge,” which holds “certain propositional beliefs” concerning the object of study (909–910) (Penner 1995). A theory is thus an abstract proposal—presumably a testable one—that is grounded in empirical observations, or, in other words, data. Penner explains that a theory’s truth or untruth is, in many cases, neither readily affirmable nor deniable (909–910). This is because theory is a framework, a map—to use a by now well-known Smithian notion—with which we may chart and thereby understand something about the territory that is of scholarly interest, as the case may be (Smith 1978, 309). While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as religious—there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy. (Smith 1978, xi) It was once a tactic of students of religion to cite the appendix of James J. Leuba’s Psychological Study of Religion (1912), which lists more than fifty definitions of religion, to demonstrate that ‘the effort clearly to define religion in short compass is a hopeless task.’ Not at all! The moral of Leuba is not that religion cannot be defined, but that it can be defined, with greater or lesser success, more than fifty ways. (Smith 2004, 193) With all of this in mind, it bears asking: if a theory—or, really, any theory—is not verifiably true (inasmuch as it does not more or less accurately correspond to some primary source), what exact function does it serve? In answering this question, Smith offers that “the scholarly imagination of ‘religion’ as an intellectual category”—and we should understand imagination as a theory-building and creating act which brings the object into focus—“establishes a disciplinary horizon that should play the same sort of role as ‘language’ in linguistics or ‘culture’ in anthropology” (Smith 2004, 369). This “disciplinary horizon” that Smith describes is neither fixed nor readily apparent. Still, it is repeatedly brought into existence through the set of discourses that produce and govern the field of History of Religions itself. It should be readily clear at this point, if it were not already, that discussions of theories of religion happen at the metadiscursive level. Thus, scholarly debate about theory constitutes one site of discourse that describes and delimits the very boundaries of the academic study of religion. Smith further notes that “the generic category [e.g., religion, language, culture] supplies the field with a theoretical object of study, different from, but complementary to, their particular subject matters” (Smith 2004, 369). The theoretical object of study may not ever be perfectly clear. Its clarity fluctuates depending upon the lens being employed—not to mention the skills of the employer of that lens. In examining Smith’s meta-level work on theory, we should note the distinction that he makes between object and subject matter, or, put another way, between theory and data. It is to this specific distinction that I now turn, for in further illumining what theory is, it is helpful to show it to be in contradistinction to that which it is not. To that end, we turn to his playful yet stunningly serious essay, “A Twice-Told Tale: The History of the History of Religions’ History.” In “A Twice-Told Tale,” Smith offers a revised narrative of the constitution of history of religions as a field in which he charts present-day theoretical and ideological fault lines. In so doing, he works against the oft-told liberatory tale—à la his Chicago predecessor, Joachim Wach—of the History of Religions emancipating itself from the stranglehold of theology (Wach 7–18).3 Rather, Smith locates the History of Religions within philology, thus resituating the discipline as a descendant of Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romantic linguistic thought. In so doing, he indicates that the “fundamental issue that yet divides us” is the issue of presence vs. re-presentation (an issue of far broader scope than theology vs. religious studies: Smith 2004, 363). The difference between these two conceptions is a matter of linguistics and not semantics. On the one hand, those who fall into the “presence” camp claim that humans are able to experience the world directly, that it is immediate and thus unmediated via language, a supposedly neutral medium. This is the camp of the proponents of the onto-reality of all stripes and in a variety of disciplines, including scholars such as Mircea Eliade (1907–1986). On the other hand are those who fall into the “representation” camp, those who, claiming that language shapes, causes, or determines how humans experience the world, argue that reality is mediated via language and is never immediate. To be sure, Smith has offered both critique and compliment of Eliade’s work in other essays; most notably, under the heading of “critique,” is his brutal takedown of Eliade’s paradigmatic notion of the sacred center in To Take Place (Smith 1987, 1–23). Rather more conciliatory, on the other hand, is his two-part essay entitled “Acknowledgments,” which offers a defense of Eliade’s morphological method in opposition to Eliade’s critics who bemoan his ahistorical tendencies (Smith 2004, 61–100).4 Be this as it may, Eliade is not Smith’s target in this essay; it is rather the philologists, the opponents of Eliade, who find themselves on the receiving end of a thoroughgoing Smithian critique. Following Eliade’s own critique of the philologists, Smith writes that the “philologically based historians of religions persistently take parts for wholes, thereby giving priority to the local rather than to the general and typical” (368). Surely, it is not difficult to see why such an approach would be an affront to Eliade’s scholarly sensibilities; one need only take the most casual of glances through Patterns of Comparative Religion to understand that archetypal sameness and universal patterns in religious expression and phenomena are at the very heart of the Eliadean project.5 That philologists (mis)take parts for wholes leads to a decentralization and de-unification of the History of Religions. Focus on languages, on particular data qua data rather than as exempli gratia, Eliade says, causes the field to be “endlessly fragmented [with the resulting] fragments [being] reabsorbed in the different philologies” (Eliade 1965, 17). Smith, for his part, attributes the localization of the field to the growth of language competency as the primary requisite component for graduate study and scholarly research. This, he maintains, is an over-correction to the woefully unqualified “amateurs who often comprised religion programs prior to the 1960s,” the result being that “competence in a particular religious tradition [has become] measured largely by the acquisition of philological expertise” (Smith 2013, 68). While the prerequisite of research language competency remains an irreplaceable scholarly virtue for many fields, its primacy in the History of Religions has come, for Smith, at great cost. In “A Twice-Told Tale,” he writes that the dominance of linguistic ability as the “criterion for achieving professional status” has resulted in “other matters, preeminently those associated with mastering the second-order discourse of the field” being “pushed to the side” (Smith 2004, 368). “Philology,” he writes, “is the vocation; generalization and theory, the avocation” (368). Elsewhere, he insists that “graduate training in religion became chiefly a matter of linguistic expertise (largely farmed out to other [i.e., area studies] departments)” (Smith 2013, 68). I shall return to the question of theory, generalization, metadiscourse, and their importance to the field of religious studies below. For now, it is sufficient to recognize the hierarchy that, in Smith’s eyes, emerged in religious studies and the training of graduate students therein—the examination of whom is one concrete way of discerning that which the guild holds to be most important at any given time. Bearing in mind the primacy of philologically inclined scholars within the field, we may reasonably ask, what are the consequences that follow from this mode of analysis? Smith laments the tautological state of the field, wherein “texts are pointed to, paraphrased, or summarized as if their citation is, by itself, sufficient to (Smith 2004, 368). another way, the data is to be and in its own The and phenomena that a scholar of religion studies are not in of a larger question, or concerning religion or Rather, scholarly work with of the The field has been of what Smith Smith tells from specific and into comparison with at least one other specific The attention to of given that it from specific data to more general in the production of The generalization is not Smith to show the distinction between what is universal what is true for what is general is true for some often with many In upon the distinction in linguistics between as the object of study and as the subject matter, Smith in of generalization, the field would put more and into the subject matter of religious directly to its that is, theories of religion to religion itself, that may The to the of of a disciplinary the field to tautological for can be no study of religion such a horizon” (Smith 2004, The remains that there field of religious studies an of data. Smith attributes this reality to Eliade’s of writing that all but of the boundaries of data for the of remains his to the study of (Smith 2004, Eliade to of data of and for use in his than the philologists have their on the Eliadean by and against any theory which might and phenomena into with one It is thus that I understand data, as the in the heading of this to the by the to be so that it any of the for the is the on data that it out the and the of theoretical The of such a point, Smith tells is that it in to or that end being different from subject matter for purposes of a larger theory, that which we study a in which we might the of that which we have as data, we are to Smith thus theory, a a a generalization cannot be the data the difference between theory and data, us another category under the heading of which theory is In his Study writes that scholars of religion often and theory and upon the importance of the distinction between the writes that to religion a explanation for the and of religion. of of religion as a human and to one or a of specific is from theory, in the that it to research and I with that, are by but I would that for their part, are by This relationship between theory and method in the work of J. Z. his use of the method scholarly use is, of the of of his from his to in with his upon generalization qua comparison at us there can be no that comparison remains the method of is (Smith 1978, This at the of Smith’s of comparison in his essay Smith’s the his for the method with his of of is one such critique of Smith describes of and of to be sure, is a mode of Smith has a of for the morphological method given that, through it offers a mode of and generalization that is both and Still, as the other of has its and thus the for a its With a Smith his of comparison with a more is with the of the that of “the only to be no at (Smith The remains that for most the of their study has been to demonstrate the of With this as its it that has been chiefly an of the of such Smith the For can such a method with such a ever produce and rather than is the he maintains, that is in these the of difference as the of its being than and a of a the in the of some Smith’s most writing about his that he to in his to the A as a of to two In his a more clearly the of his and I shall these in With one by a specific and it the of its and that it with its local is on and Following this comes the of the attention to or a on how the has been in scholarly with specific attention to how the has the Smith this the has been with one another is and the same is each of the in question, the scholar may on to the which on and the to be In the comparison to happen in of question, theory, or of to another way, the comparison some of the in to be of the of the in of the into the through a are and in close to each other and to the scholar’s own meta-level that the of the field itself. This leads to the by which the to the are and in of what has been about the through and should be clear from the Smith’s method a relationship between theory and is and in of how its to theoretical that are of importance to the scholar’s and thus of importance to the of the the same theory is to both the and of the upon religions as phenomena the close that Smith’s of upon the theoretical of data the that Smith theory and method work to a of the data itself and the that govern the but this relationship no to or theory with both what theory is and what it is not and we are now to turn to a more specific of theory in Smith’s what is his theory of I that theory may and very often is, In the study of religion, one often that most of is in the of the object of at other we might a theory of religion to take on a more of what religion that is, what function it in human may be by now, the work of J. Z. Smith is less with a theory of religion than it is with that it is as important that scholars for their own theories of religion as the data with which Still, I think it is attention to one of Smith’s is given that it tells us a great about the most of his In his essay Not Smith to show the human and status of religion, writing that is an human (Smith 1978, By this Smith brings what is often to be a or into the human thus and the set of the boundaries of the scholarly it is who the of the history of religions he writes in his on method that I is that discourse is its to of and with an authority and in the is that discourse which of and in a human and its claim to authority on can this be is it that scholars of religion themselves with in their Smith offers an to these writing that we study we study religion is one mode of of within which find themselves and in which to with his is the within the of the for the to and so as to have in which to It is the to in such a way as to the that existence Religion is a mode of human a which both and for this one may a of Smith’s theoretical and most is Smith’s notion that religion is a human It is, to one way in which humans of this the that religion is It its not from on the or the from the to and of through the use of and experiences of religion is not a of an independent upon humans from Its status as a set of phenomena that we understand it as being in the of in of and the In to being a not an of for Smith, religion is This is the that he It is a that, through the and of a and for The and of religion and of in what a or the is, religions what a or the is not. this religions a framework, a that and and which of the within the of the world and the By Smith’s of religion as both and we can to understand how this for the role of the of religions within the scholarly In Not Smith History of Religions and the study of religion in the and human in opposition to the work of theology we have Smith’s of religion as a and the study of religion cannot be a study for the work that the scholar cannot be itself The scholar religious phenomena into more general that themselves to being and (Smith 2004, 369). In other words, be the specific in question has been and through the of only can the data be into a theoretical through the which Smith and what Smith’s theory is, I return once to the relationship between method and theory in his In religion as a and of specific and as a of through Smith a method that the and of both the data and the study religion within the Smith to the that he has to a more and that gives primacy to generalization. Smith’s method is, in mind, one that to to and those of us who for of religious data, the religions of and religion Still, we might Smith’s theory is, in for he was far from the to on the of religion. While he for the of the data that we to study and the that we from at a Eliade’s morphological method at and the field as a all but a in of and of it seems to that it Smith’s and theory of religion have little for the field The language is of Smith’s he has been not to any words think of which may be against are we to with the words he in and not to mention by the these words of any that might us to what religion is. In the to his in a of writes that is a theory in the that there is no based not all theory is and by this I that it is not in the of an object of case to its further another way, theory is we that it is and it by it in or we it in of as Smith in a tautological re-presentation of the data at It is in the of the from in of a of the object of Smith, his insists that we Given I the that the of religion that Smith offers in Not is not one of his to the in mind, this very For as he has us “the moral is not that religion cannot be defined, but that it can be defined, with greater or lesser success, more than fifty Thus, as I would that his his theory of religion, in the between greater and lesser on the of success, that he so to us to think about the importance of importance of and against a disciplinary his to

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