Polytheisms

Degeneration or progress

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21079093
AutoresFrancis Schmidt (École Pratique des Hautes Études, autor de correspondencia)
Año1987
Volumen3
Número1
Páginas9-60
Fecha de publicación1987-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHistory and Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0275-7206 • E-ISSN: 1477-2612
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02757206.1987.9960779
OpenAlexW2001852122
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas24

Before the word "polytheism"; (invented by Philo of Alexandria) was rediscovered by Jean Bodin in 1580, the term used was "idolatry";. The starting point of all questions pertaining to idolatry — and principally the problem of its origins — was the biblical text. During the sixteenth century and up until G.J. Vossius, the origin of idolatry was, first and foremost, a problem of scriptural exegesis. The English deists treated this problem in a new light: relegating biblical evidence to a position of secondary importance, they anchored the debate in the realm of the comparative history of religions. Theologians and deists were in agreement, however, when they considered polytheism as the degradation of an anterior state, that of primitive monotheism. During the Age of the Enlightenment, when D. Hume situated polytheism at the religious origin of mankind, the reversal was complete: polytheism had been reassessed. With the religious revival of Romanticism, the essential problem — the subject of debate throughout the nineteenth century — was henceforth to know whether the first peoples had been monotheistic or polytheistic, and whether the religious history of mankind should be interpreted in terms of the theory of degeneration or that of progress. From Herder to Max Müller, in what forms did the theory of degeneration appear? On the contrary, from Meiners to Tylor or Morgan, what works were made possible by the reversal brought about by the philosophers of the Enlightenment? Finally, in relation to those great theoretical schemata of History, what was the place of the two new sciences which arose in the last decades of the nineteenth century: Anthropology — and, above all, religious Anthropology — and the comparative History of religions

Art · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Exegesis · History of religions · Idolatry · Literature · Realm · Theology · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Philosophy · Religious studies · Study and Philosophy of Religion