Comparison

When you come right down to it, comparison is easy as pie. Choose two things and say how they are similar and different in some respect. Moreover, as many have argued, none more notably than J. Z. Smith in Map Is Not Territory (1978), comparison is “a fundamental characteristic of human intelligence,” without which “we could not speak, perceive, learn, or reason” (240). Without comparison, there would be no academic study of religion. Why, then, all the fuss? Well, there is first of all the apparent absence of a method, as the very same J. Z. Smith has also argued “In Comparison a Magic Dwells” (1982). Although this hardly stops bakers from sorting between Granny Smiths and Macintoshes, it gives no end of pause to scholars of religion who would sort between this and that religious thing. Who is to say, and how are we to know, when two or more behaviors, concepts, or artifacts are similar and different in some religious respect?

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  Maia Kotrosits, James Given et al.•Method & Theory in the Study of…•2025

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