Luther H Martins
Biographic Data
| ID | 342486 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Luther H Martins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Luther H |
| FAMILY NAME | Martins |
| SIGNATURE | MARTINS L H |
| AFFILIATIONS | 1The University of Vermont |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-1006-8917 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Habits of Religious Submission: Servile Docility or Prosociality?
Like a number of other contemporary scholars, I have adopted a neo-Tylorean “minimal definition of religion” to refer to (at least something like) “any social group that legitimates itself, its beliefs, and/or its practices by claims to the authority of a superhuman agent.” But what exactly is meant by submission to authority? Is such submission to the authority of religions of prosocial benefit, as a number of recent experimental studies have sh…
Cognitive historiography and the history of religions
This article explores the history of religions as a proper historiographical enterprise (rather than as a synonym for the academic study of religion, religious studies, etc.). It suggests the promises and perils of traditional historiographic methods and proposes the way in which cognitive scientific theory might augment and provide a corrective for those methods. It also proposes a stipulation for the category of "religion" as a kind of cross-cu…
Seeing the Mithraic Tauroctony
What might a Mithraic initiate have seen when he viewed the ubiquitous tauroctonous image? Rather than understanding the tauroctony as illustrating an episode in a presumed mythic life of Mithras or as exemplifying some conceptual principle, this article seeks to understand the tauroctony as image qua image. Insights from art historians, neurophysiologists, and neurocognitivists show that cultural expectations for seeing the tauroctony are as an …
Reflections on My Studies of the Roman Cults of Mithras for the Historical and Comparative Study of Religions
I have spent a number of years focusing my research on the Roman Cults of Mithras. In this autobiographical reflection on that study, I consider the relationship between research on a specific, if perhaps obscure, religious tradition and methodological and theoretical issues in historical and comparative studies of religion generally
Documenting the Delusion: A Case Study
This paper documents the lack of interest in creating an environment to promote a naturalistic study of religious thought and behavior at the Department for the Study of Religion ( dsr ) of the University of Toronto. The dsr , it seems to me, simply exemplifies the point about the self-deception and delusion that characterizes many departments for the study of religion about their academic or scientific credibility that I make in the essay
Great expectations for Ara Norenzayan'sBig Gods
In Big Gods (2013), Ara Norenzayan argues that the rise of large-scale societies was made possible by an extension of small-scale religious prosociality, presided over (and enforced) by Big moralizing watchful Gods. While religious prosociality is, of course, a redundant characterization of any small-scale religious group, it is doubtful that its extension can account for the historical emergence of large-scale societies, nor can cooperation be e…
The Ecology of Threat Detection and Precautionary Response from the Perspectives of Evolutionary Psychology, Cognitive Science and Historiography: The Case of the Roman Cults of Mithras
“Cognitive historiography” employs the cognitive sciences, and their frame of evolutionary theory, to help explicate the complexities of historical data. Employing evidence for an evolved “hazard protection system” among Homo sapiens, Martin argues that religion is a “natural security system” for detecting signs of potential danger in the environment and for developing precautionary responses to them, especially through ritual. He supports this a…
The Scientific Study of Religion: Two Case Studies
The Scientific Study of Religion: Two Case Studies, One Response
A response to the previous four papers
Aspects of ‘Religious Experience’ among the Hellenistic Mystery Religions
The claim that religious experience is the basis for religious practices, ideas and institutions seems to be grounded more in theological (Protestant) bias than in historical evidence. From the example of the Graeco-Roman mystery religions, it would seem that it is religious practices, specifically, their rites of initiation that produced experiences that were interpreted by initiates as ‘religious.’ Nor was the production of such experiences con…
The Hellenisation of Judaeo-Christian Faith or the Christianisation of Hellenic Thought
In this article I explore the relationship between faith and reason among the early Christianities. The approach here favours the perspective of social history whereby the establishment of claims to a universal and absolute monotheism in Western society is viewed as an outcome of power relations - or an increasingly close alliance among certain of the early Christianities and between these and the state. In this sense, my thesis is that rather th…
History, Cognitive Science, and the Problematic Study of Folk Religions: The Case of the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter
Cognition, society and religion: A new approach to the study of culture
The problem with the study of culture, as with that of religion, has been an independent status assumed for both despite recognitions of their constructed nature. Consequently, cultural studies have relied almost exclusively on redundantly descriptive and relativistic hermeneutical methods. By focusing on the mental mechanisms of H. sapiens, shared in common as a consequence of evolutionary history, the emerging field of cognitive science is begi…
Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age. Antonía Tripolitis
Marcel Gauchet: The disenchantment of the world
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Of Religious Syncretism, Comparative Religion and Spiritual Quests
From the time when religions mingled in the Greco-Roman world thinkers have been compelled to evaluate their own beliefs and practices in relation to those of other peoples and races, but it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century of our era that a serious attempt was made to apply scientific principles to the comparative and historical study of the subject. (W.James 1961 [1902]: 15)
History, historiography and Christian origins
The study of Christian origins should in no way differ from the study of anything past and, yet, historical studies of Christianity continue to "privilege" the data with imagined origins. In contrast to such imaginative fictions, critical historiography is based on human events presumed actually to have occurred. The productions of and, consequently, the explanations for such data instantiate both the material and the mental environments of human…
Religion as an Independent Variable: Revisiting the Weberian Hypothesis
Studies in the sociology of religion generally assume "religion" to be causal with little or no attention paid to the theoretical justification or basis for such a claim. We argue in this paper that most such studies fail to satisfy the conditions for causal inference. Further, Weber, whom sociologists of religion often cite when theoretical claims are made, at worse never proposes religion as an independent variable and, at best is very ambiguou…
Cognition, capitalism, and causality: A report on the Naasr/SSSR panels, Nashville, November 1996
Cognition, capitalism, and causality: A report on the NAASR/SSSR panels, Nashville, November 1996 LUTHER H. MARTIN and DANIEL KRYMKOWSKI This is the third year in which the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR) has organized sessions in association with the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). Two of these sessions, those on cognition and causality, were continuations of discus- sions b…
Syncretism, historicism, and cognition: A response to Michael Pye1
Syncretism, historicism, and cognition: A response to Michael Pye1 LUTHER H. MARTIN "Syncretism" is a central category for the modern study of religion, the sense of which remains, nevertheless, anchored in the historical orientation of its nineteenth-century definition. The overriding historiographical goal during this century was an understanding of human history "wie es eigentlich gewe- sen", to cite Leopold von Ranke's historistic dictum (182…
The new comparativism in the study of religion: A symposium
Gods or Ambassadors of God? Barnabas and Paul in Lystra
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The discourse of (Michel Foucault's) life: A review essay
The discourse of (Michel Foucault's) life: A review essay LUTHER H. MARTIN Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault. Trans. Betsy Wing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1989]. xiii - 374 pp. ISBN 0-674-57287-4. $27.95. David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. xxiii - 599 pp. ISBN 0-679-43074-1. $30.00. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. 491 pp. ISBN 0-671-69550-9. $2…
The discourse of (Michel Foucault's) life: A review essay
A Mithraic Catechism from Egypt
Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault
Shortly before his death in 1984, Michel Foucault spoke of an idea for a new book on technologies of the self. He described it as composed of different papers about the self..., about the role of reading and writing in constituting the self... and so on. The book Foucault envisioned was based on a faculty seminar on Technologies of the Self, originally presented at the University of Vermont in the fall of 1982. This volume is a partial record of …
Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction
This is a brief and lively introduction to the religious institutions, beliefs and practices of the Graeco-Roman world during the 'Hellenistic Age' (c.300 BC-300 AD). Discussion of the various phenomena of Hellenistic religion is organized around the three classic types: piety, mystery, and gnosis. As the author follows the historical development of these phenomena, he demonstrates the effect of religion on two fundamental transformations of the …
The Anti-Individualistic Ideology of Hellenistic Culture
The Ecology of Threat Detection and Precautionary Response from the Perspectives of Evolutionary Psychology, Cognitive Science and Historiography: The Case of the Roman Cults of Mithras
“Cognitive historiography” employs the cognitive sciences, and their frame of evolutionary theory, to help explicate the complexities of historical data. Employing evidence for an evolved “hazard protection system” among Homo sapiens, Martin argues that religion is a “natural security system” for detecting signs of potential danger in the environment and for developing precautionary responses to them, especially through ritual. He supports this a…
Why Cecropian Minerva: Hellenistic Religious Syncretism as System
Great expectations for Ara Norenzayan'sBig Gods
In Big Gods (2013), Ara Norenzayan argues that the rise of large-scale societies was made possible by an extension of small-scale religious prosociality, presided over (and enforced) by Big moralizing watchful Gods. While religious prosociality is, of course, a redundant characterization of any small-scale religious group, it is doubtful that its extension can account for the historical emergence of large-scale societies, nor can cooperation be e…
The Scientific Study of Religion: Two Case Studies, One Response
A response to the previous four papers
Cognition, society and religion: A new approach to the study of culture
The problem with the study of culture, as with that of religion, has been an independent status assumed for both despite recognitions of their constructed nature. Consequently, cultural studies have relied almost exclusively on redundantly descriptive and relativistic hermeneutical methods. By focusing on the mental mechanisms of H. sapiens, shared in common as a consequence of evolutionary history, the emerging field of cognitive science is begi…
Of Religious Syncretism, Comparative Religion and Spiritual Quests
From the time when religions mingled in the Greco-Roman world thinkers have been compelled to evaluate their own beliefs and practices in relation to those of other peoples and races, but it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century of our era that a serious attempt was made to apply scientific principles to the comparative and historical study of the subject. (W.James 1961 [1902]: 15)
Syncretism, historicism, and cognition: A response to Michael Pye1
Syncretism, historicism, and cognition: A response to Michael Pye1 LUTHER H. MARTIN "Syncretism" is a central category for the modern study of religion, the sense of which remains, nevertheless, anchored in the historical orientation of its nineteenth-century definition. The overriding historiographical goal during this century was an understanding of human history "wie es eigentlich gewe- sen", to cite Leopold von Ranke's historistic dictum (182…
On declaring WAR: A critical comment
In recent reviews of Marburg Revisited: Institutions and Strategies in Study of Religion, ed. Michael Pye, (Marburg: Diagonal-verlag, 1989), proceedings of special conference of International Association for History of Religions (IAHR), Ninian Smart and Ursula King (MTSR 2/2 [1990a]: 298-304 and 3/1 [1991]: 142-146) take us to task for giving attention once again to problem of interference of religious practice in academic study of religion. Smar…
The Anti-Philosophical Polemic and Gnostic Soteriology in 'the Treatise On the Resurrection' (Cg I, 3)
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
"The Treatise On the Resurrection" (Cg 1,3) and Diatribe Style
"THE TREATISE ON THE RESURRECTION" (CG 1,3) AND DIATRIBE STYLE BY LUTHER H. MARTIN, JR. The contents of any writing must be understood as integral with the media through which these contents are manifest. Whereas attention is usually directed towards an understanding of literary form, stylistic analysis is often neglected - or assumed. However, stylistic analysis can add to our understanding of the Sitz im Leben of the writing. In one of the firs…
"The Treatise on the Resurrection" (CG I,3) and Diatribe Style
Josephus' Use of Heimarmene in the Jewish Antiquities Xiii, 171-3
postulate that everything is brought about by fate (i[ptapp~vrl), still they do not deprive the human will of the pursuit of what is in man's power, since it was God's good pleasure that there should be a fusion and that the will of man with his virtue and vice should be admitted to the council-chamber of fate. (Ant. XVIII, 13) Later, in this same passage, he characterizes the position of the Sadducees and the Essenes by contrasting them with thi…
Why Cecropian Minerva: Hellenistic Religious Syncretism as System
Why Cecropian Minerva
Essays on Jung and the Study of Religion
Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction
This is a brief and lively introduction to the religious institutions, beliefs and practices of the Graeco-Roman world during the 'Hellenistic Age' (c.300 BC-300 AD). Discussion of the various phenomena of Hellenistic religion is organized around the three classic types: piety, mystery, and gnosis. As the author follows the historical development of these phenomena, he demonstrates the effect of religion on two fundamental transformations of the …
Roman Mithraism and Christianity
Roman Mithraism and Christianity1
Les deux religions n'ont ete rivales qu'en un sens tres restreint| le mithraisme, religion astrale, n'etait que l'une des composantes du paganisme romain eclectique dont la substance etait la religion d'Etat. La lutte reelle eut lieu entre ce paganisme et le christianisme
Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault
Shortly before his death in 1984, Michel Foucault spoke of an idea for a new book on technologies of the self. He described it as composed of different papers about the self..., about the role of reading and writing in constituting the self... and so on. The book Foucault envisioned was based on a faculty seminar on Technologies of the Self, originally presented at the University of Vermont in the fall of 1982. This volume is a partial record of …
A Report On the XVIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions
The Encyclopedia Hellenistica and Christian Origins
The compilations of knowledge from a particular time and place together make up the "encyclopaedia" of their era. The "entries" which constitute an "Encyclopaedia Hellenistica" give expression to the epistemological possibilities of the Hellenistic period. A period of Hellenistic religious history has been conventionally defined with Hellenistic political history as beginning with Alexander's empire and concluding with Augustus's. Contemporary hi…
The Study of Religion in Its Social-Scientific Context: A Perspective On the 1989 Warsaw Conference On Methodology
Recent Historiography and the History of Religions: An Appreciative Response To Arthur McCalla
One of several ironies that characterizes modern study known as of religions is that this approach has come to designate for many an essentially ahistorical method.1 For those of us who maintain that study of religion should include history of religions, Arthur McCalla's recent article on The Importance of Recent Historiography for Study of Religious Thought (MTSR 2/2 [1990], 167-179) is a welcome contribution to theoretical literature of field. …
The Hope of the Early Church. A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology
Foreword Introduction 1. Visions of a new day: early Semitic Christianity and Christian apocalyptic 2. Making history intelligible: eschatology and the apologists 3. Regaining the light: eschatology in the gnostic crisis (150-200) 4. Senectus Mundi: eschatology in the West, 200-250 5. A school for souls: Alexandrian eschatology and its critics (185-300) 6. The dawn of the final conflict: Latin eschatology in the great persecution (303-313) 7. Fac…
On declaring WAR: A critical comment
In recent reviews of Marburg Revisited: Institutions and Strategies in Study of Religion, ed. Michael Pye, (Marburg: Diagonal-verlag, 1989), proceedings of special conference of International Association for History of Religions (IAHR), Ninian Smart and Ursula King (MTSR 2/2 [1990a]: 298-304 and 3/1 [1991]: 142-146) take us to task for giving attention once again to problem of interference of religious practice in academic study of religion. Smar…
A Mithraic Catechism from Egypt
The Anti-Individualistic Ideology of Hellenistic Culture
The Anti-Individualistic Ideology of Hellenistic Culture1
Historical generalizations are invariably shaped by modern cultural values. One of the dominant values of modern Western culture is individualism, the origins of which tend to be claimed by historians for their own domains of research, with examples extending from sixth-century B.C. Greece through modern Europe. The generalization about a Hellenistic period of history, first made in the nineteenth-century, clearly reflects this value of individua…
Gods or Ambassadors of God? Barnabas and Paul in Lystra
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The discourse of (Michel Foucault's) life: A review essay
The discourse of (Michel Foucault's) life: A review essay LUTHER H. MARTIN Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault. Trans. Betsy Wing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1989]. xiii - 374 pp. ISBN 0-674-57287-4. $27.95. David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. xxiii - 599 pp. ISBN 0-679-43074-1. $30.00. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. 491 pp. ISBN 0-671-69550-9. $2…
The discourse of (Michel Foucault's) life: A review essay
Syncretism, historicism, and cognition: A response to Michael Pye1
Syncretism, historicism, and cognition: A response to Michael Pye1 LUTHER H. MARTIN "Syncretism" is a central category for the modern study of religion, the sense of which remains, nevertheless, anchored in the historical orientation of its nineteenth-century definition. The overriding historiographical goal during this century was an understanding of human history "wie es eigentlich gewe- sen", to cite Leopold von Ranke's historistic dictum (182…
The new comparativism in the study of religion: A symposium
Philosophy (39 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Epistemology (23 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Religious studies (19 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (18 works) · History (16 works) · History of religions (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Law (14 works)