Jesus and Addiction to Origins
Towards an Anthropocentric Study of Religion
By: Willi Braun
Edited by: Russell T. McCutcheon
256 Pages
Jesus and Addiction to Origins: Toward an Anthropocentric Study of Religion, edited by Russell T. McCutcheon, is a compilation of several articles written by Willi Braun. The volume is divided into three parts. “Part I: Generalities” comprises three chapters. “Part II: Particularities” has seven chapters. “Part III: Afterword” is a very helpful summary and concluding chapter written by William E. Arnal.
The purpose of this collection of essays is to show that the performances usually presented as religious are, in fact, human productions. The volume argues for an anthropocentric, human-focused study of religious practices. The result is a provocative and challenging proposal for anyone engaged in studying religion, but especially those concerned about ancient Christian rhetoric and practices.
Several characteristics make this volume an interesting project. First, it aims at presenting a clear anthropological approach to the study of religion, especially through the specific site of early Christianities within the larger Greek and Roman cultures and religions. Second, it demonstrates the possibility of studying the New Testament and other texts related to early Christianities in a thorough and sophisticated manner using tools both from sociology and anthropology.
The first three chapters (“Religion: A Guide,” “The Irony of Religion,” and “Introducing Religion”) provide a solid rationale for studying religion from an anthropocentric standpoint. These introductory chapters can be used as required readings for a Method and Theory in the Study of Religion seminar at the master’s level. The very concept of religion, Braun argues, may induce alienation in its artificial separation of the ordinary and human character of our study from something otherworldly or more-than-human social realities. The argument advanced is that we need to place the often-presented phenomena conceived as the works of God, or of various deities, spirits, demons, and ancestors within human interests, political and ideological agendas, and social realities.
The second part of the book is much more difficult to assess or to place within a coherent whole because of the various topics it covers. They vary from looking at Christian origins and the Gospel of Mark to the Sayings Gospel Q and the making of an early Jesus group, or from musing about sex, gender, and empire to physiotherapy of femininity in early Christianity. The reader may feel totally lost in trying to make sense of these disparate topics under the umbrella of Jesus and Addiction to Origins. Individually, the chapters may be interesting and thought provoking, and they may push a reader to understand the topic(s) differently, that is, from an anthropological lens, but they do not articulate a specific argument, and neither do they develop a particular theme related to the book’s title. Notwithstanding these few critical remarks, the essays in this second part of the volume show a keen interest in, and mastery of, critical theory and socio-political language, which the author uses to analyze a complex tapestry of texts related to the earliest Christianities, both from a canonical and non-canonical perspective.
The essays clearly demonstrate the human processes behind mythmaking and ideology, whether they are about power, social formation, or material practices. Braun is interested in redescribing social phenomena related to Christian origins in social terms. He envisions a future for the study of Christian beginnings and history firmly located within the secular and public academic space, where the history of Christianity is studied through ordinary, yet extremely complex, human history-making processes. Braun demonstrates that this is an intellectual endeavour both possible and necessary to place New Testament study and Christian origins in a more solid and intellectual rigorous footing. In this way, the volume has succeeded.
The Afterword by Arnal is very helpful, especially because it gives the reader an intellectual background to the ideas Braun develops in the collection of essays. Braun’s scholarly output is indebted in great measure to Feuerbach, especially his 1844 book, The Essence of Christianity. Indeed, as Braun develops in his essays, Feuerbach advanced that God, religion, or superhuman entities are human creations. In this sense, knowledge or consciousness of God are simply self-knowledge and self-consciousness. In the case of the study of the New Testament or Christian origins, the essays describe, and Arnal clearly summarizes and highlights their contributions, the data we have are about self-understanding and self-knowledge. The phenomena become clearer when we try to make sense of them in the language of politics and sociology. This de-mythologizing and demystifying methodology, in Arnal’s understanding, is “an exercise in debunking” (186).
Graduate students and scholars will largely benefit from this book.
Ronald Charles is associate professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto.
Ronald CharlesDate Of Review:June 21, 2023
Willi Braun is a professor emeritus in the Department of History and Classics and the Program in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the former president of the North American Association for the Study of Religion and also the past president of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. Although a specialist in the writings and social formations of earliest Christianities in the Roman empire, his work also focuses on the methods and theories of the academic study of religion itself. He has published and presented his work widely and served as editor of a variety of books and journals, including his longtime role as editor of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion; most recently, he co-edited Reading J. Z. Smith: Interviews and Essay (Oxford, 2018).
Russell T. McCutcheon is professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. His major publications include Manufacutring Religion (Oxford University Press, 1997), The Guide to the Study of Religion (Bloomsbury, 2000), Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (State University of New York Press, 2001), and The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (Routledge, 2003).
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