History of religions
When religious history is referred to a the development of religious beliefs and practices of mankind. They can be read in the early days especially at grave sites and grave goods, later in the entire written, artistic and architectural tradition of stock cultures. On the other hand, there is the university specialist religious history, which deals with historical and contemporary religious history.
Baselines
From the vast complexity of the history of religions, some basic trends can be filtered out. The archaeologically verifiable early stage reveals animism. The agrarian cultures developed a pantheon of deities with myths, temples and images. ( Was hands down the Israel ) from the nomadic way of life sprang from the shape of an imaging loose or imaging poor monotheism, which had announced in Egypt ( Akhenaten ) later in the philosophy of ancient Greece learned nearly worldwide distribution in Christianity and Islam, with differences. The globalization of the last few centuries, intensified in the modern age of media and mobility seems to bring a crisis of all traditional religions with them. The crisis, however, can also be regarded as a " transformation " of religion, which by the term invisible religion (invisible religion) is circumscribed.
Religious history was usually interpreted evolutionist especially in the 19th century, often with colonial - Darwinian coloring, that is, as developing original, "primitive" forms, which were often seen as a low - animism, totemism, or the so-called original monotheism Wilhelm Schmidt - to more developed, higher forms, ie approximately over polytheism to monotheism, to the " higher religions ". Later, an egalitarian descriptive, phenomenological approach within the scientific discipline has emerged in return, which has meant that books with the title " History of Religion " can now only be an incoherent juxtaposition of monographs. Others give now to consider that in abandoning the attempt to trace developments and to understand the later of its relation to the foregoing it, the history of the concept loses its contents ( see, eg, Leslie White and other representatives of Neoevolutionismus ).
Religious history as a science
History of religion also means the science that deals with the religions of the past and present in relation to his development in a historical context. Here, the history of religion examines the corresponding first religion in history and tradition their own, for example, to classify this religion later on the basis of functional or typological criteria and classify. This creates a base for the faith- independent comparisons of various religions ( comparative religious studies ) is essential. In practice, the transition to the independent specialist study of religion is fluid.
Contrary to this, the phenomenological flow within the history of religion, which understands the term ' religion ' as Abstractum, and therefore rejects comparative or historical - chronological einordnende methods because this the uniqueness of the various religious ideas can not cope.
Development of science History of Religion in Germany
The first Chair of Religious History was established in 1912 for the Swedish Religionsphänomenologen Nathan Soderblom in Leipzig. This happened even though the churches were interested in a denominational theology than to the then- popular little more religious history, and represented a fundamentally new development in terms of scientific research of religions. The historically contingent development of the religious history of the Christian theologies had the consequence that this subject in the theological faculties was established - what can be observed even today. From the History of Religion Religious Studies later developed.
History of Religion and Religious Studies
Although the practically relevant differences between religious history and religious studies may be small, there are those who assign the subjects delimiting characteristics. So there is the argument that the history of religion the religions " in depth" studied as a historical science, the science of religion religions, however, faces " in width " and compares. That the methodology of the two compartments differs in these points. Basically, this is to say that the history of religion provides the foundations for a systematic study of religion. This important link between the two subjects is that which connects the history of religion in contrast to other disciplines such as the sociology of religion or psychology of religion most closely associated with the science of religion. This is expressed, for example, in the naming of the largest scientific organization in Germany religion, DVRG ( German Association for the History of Religion ), from, although there are universities at which you can study both religious studies and religious history. There are also religious teachers who teach such a thing.