History and Religion Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten Herausgegeben von Jörg Rüpke und Christoph Uehlinger Band 68 History and Religion Narrating a Religious Past Edited by Bernd-Christian Otto, Susanne Rau and Jörg Rüpke with the support of Andrés Quero-Sánchez ISBN 978-3-11-044454-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-044595-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-043725-6 ISSN 0939-2580 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ∞ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com TableofContents Historyand Religion 1 Section I Origins and developments Introduction 21 Johannes Bronkhorst The historiography of Brahmanism 27 Jörg Rüpke Construing ‘religion’ by doinghistoriography: The historicisation of religion in the Roman Republic 45 Anders Klostergaard Petersen The use of historiography in Paul: Acase-study of the instrumentalisation of the past in the context of Late Second Temple Judaism 63 Ingvild Sælid Gilhus Flirty fishing and poisonous serpents: Epiphanius of Salamis inside his Medical chestagainstheresies 93 Sylvie Hureau Reading sutras in biographies of Chinese Buddhist monks 109 Chase F. Robinson Historyand Heilsgeschichte in early Islam: Some observationsonprophetic historyand biography 119 Per K. Sørensen The development and formation of religious historiography in Tibet 151 Pekka Tolonen Medieval memories of the origins of the Waldensian movement 165 VI TableofContents Yves Krumenacker The use of historybyFrench Protestants and its impact on Protestant historiography 189 Section 2 Writing histories Introduction 205 Shahzad Bashir APerso-Islamic universalchronicle in its historical context: Ghiyās̱ al-Dīn Khwāndamīr’s Ḥabībal-siyar 209 Jon Keune Conditionsfor historicising religion: Hindu saints, regional identity,and social changeinwestern India, ca. 1600–1900 227 Susanne Rau Practitionersofreligious historiography in early modern Europe 241 Martin Mulsow Impartiality,individualisation, and the historiography of religion: Tobias Pfanner on the rituals of the Ancient Church 257 Hannah Schneider ‘The gates of the netherworld shallnot prevail against it’:The narrativeof the victoriousChurch in French Church histories of the nineteenth century 269 Franziska Metzger Conflictinghistoriographical claimsinreligiously plural societies 287 Philipp Hetmanczyk Religion and economic development: On the role of religion in the historiography of political economy in twentieth centuryChina 307 Section 3 Transforming narratives Introduction 327 TableofContents VII BenediktKranemann The notion of tradition in liturgy 333 Gabriella Gustafsson Verbs, nouns, temporality andtypology: Narrations of ritualised warfarein Roman Antiquity 355 CristianaFacchini Judaism: An inquiryintothe historical discourse 371 Renée Koch Piettre President de Brosses’smodern and post-modern fetishes in the historiography andhistoryofreligions 393 Reinhard G. Kratz Historia sacra and historicalcriticism in biblical scholarship 407 Bernd-Christian Otto ACatholic ‘magician’ historicises ‘magic’:ÉliphasLévi’s Histoire de la Magie 419 Giovanni Filoramo Locating the historyofChristianity between the historyofthe Church and the HistoryofReligions: The Italian case 445 Contributors 455 Index 459 Historyand Religion History is one of the most important culturaltools to make sense of one’ssitua- tion, to establish identity,define otherness, and explain change. As aconse- quence, the scientificdiscipline of history is not onlypracticed, but the study of historiographyhas advanced to athriving field of research. In fact,animpres- sive amount of theoretical literatureonhistoriographyhas been brought forward over the past decades. We have learned from studies focussing on the issue of narrativity thathistoriographyisusuallyimbued with tendentious rhetoricalpat- terns and ‘generic story types’ thatsignificantlyinfluencethe selection and in- terpretation of the ‘sources’ it allegedlyrelies on.¹ The debate on postmodern history has, particularlythrough its corenotion of ‘master narrative’,once again highlighted the problem of historical ‘truth’ and therebyalsoproblema- tised the instrumentalisation of historiographyfor numerous other (non-historio- graphic) purposes.² Postcolonial scholars have enhanced this critique by point- ing to the unavoidablycontingent (that is, time- and culture-bound)position of historiographersand stressed the issuesofpolitical power,reciprocal interfer- ences,and multi-perspectivity.³ Out of these circumstances arose lively debates on whether historical thinking is per se ‘Western’,⁴ or how one ought to produce non-eurocentric,comparative,multiperspective,orentangled historiography.⁵ The vast area of historical discourse analysis⁶ as well as studies on historio- graphic practices⁷ have further complicated the matter by bringing long-neglect- ed background factors of historiographytothefore – such as the dependence on culture-bound terminologyand rules of argumentation, religious and societal in- fluences, or monetary requirements and career perspectives. The literature is overwhelming,thus all followingreferences areexemplary;however,special attention is giventostandardworks and recent introductoryhandbooks,readers, or com- panions;see on the issue of narrativity White and ;Ricœur –;id. and ;Munz and ;Ankersmit ;Conermann ;Hühn et al. ;Jobs, Lüdtke ;Martínez,Scheffel ;Georgi et al. Cf. Conrad, Kessel ;Jenkins ;Cox,Stromquist ;Windschuttle ;Roberts ;Stuart . Cf. Freitag ;Codell, Macleod ;Duara ;Conrad, Randeria ;Cooper ; Chakrabarty and . Cf. Rüsen ;Kramer,Maza ;partlyFeldherr et al. Cf. Rüsen ;Wang,Iggers ;Fuchs,Stuchtey ;Budde et al. ;Haupt,Kocka . Cf. Barthes ;Bieder ;Sarasin and ;Stuckrad . Cf. de Certeau (); Rau, Studt . 2 History and Religion When combingthrough this vast array of theoretical literatureonhistoriog- raphy, one makes asurprising discovery:religion is largely absent from these studies.⁸ Of course, religious traditions have been used to exemplify certain the- oretical arguments, or novel historiographical tools have been applied to specific religious arenas.However,religion has rarely been treated as an independent, potentiallyinteresting,exceptional, or problematic case in the theoretical litera- ture on historiography. To our knowledge,there is no systematic (overall and/or comparative)scholarlystudydevoted to determiningordisentangling the com- plex relationship between history and religion, taking into account religious tra- ditionsboth as producers of historicalnarrativesaswellasdistinct topics of his- toriography(consider the genres of hagiography, salvation history,orconversion stories).⁹ It thus seems to us that religion has not yetreceivedaPPropriateatten- tion in the theoretical literature on historiography. This is surprising in so far as religion, in very different traditions of research, is acknowledgedasamajor factor for the construction of identities as it is ad- dressed as amajor factor in the course of history.Historical claims relating to religion are of utmostimportance for alarge number of historical as well as pres- ent (and pressing) political conflicts over territory and dominance, within Europe as much as globally.Religious groups have adopted history to strengthen their identity,justify theological or ritual matters,conceptualise extraordinary beings and events, or exclude theological oppositions and non-believers.Avast number of historicalnarrativeshas been composed by religious elites or has been pro- duced underthe patronage of religious institutions: Romanpriestsormagis- trateswriting about their ownorothers’ cults,bishops writing for their dioceses, cardinals writing for the Roman-CatholicChurch, Buddhist monks or ‘lay’ histo- rians writingfor monasteries or temples, Muslim biographers writing hadiths or universal chronicles (to name onlyafew examples addressed in this volume). As aconsequence, our ‘sources’ for religious as well as secular history are often im- bued with religious terminology, arguments and modes of thought (and these have,toagreater or lesser degree, alsomade their wayinto scholarlyhistoriog- raphy).Infact,until todayreligious traditions are not merelytopics,but produc- ers and world-wide distributors of historical narratives. Religions have been and See the followingintroductory handbooks on historiography: Kocka, Nipperdey –; Bentley ;Kramer,Maza ;Lambert,Schofield ;Tellingly, within the three volumes of Burns ,onlyone article – Rudolph – is devoted to religious historiography; see also Feldherr et al. Apart from rather specific studies on sacredhistory (Lewis ,Van Liereetal. )orthe impact of religious pluralisation on historiographyinearlymoderntimes (Rau ;Wallniget al. ;Rau,Laudin ). History and Religion 3 still are importantprotagonists in the public negotiation of historical events, agents, periods or,moregenerally, ‘truth’. The impressive productivity of religions in the field of historiographyismir- rored by the academic discipline of the History of Religion. Having been crucial for the establishment and earlyreputation of the academic StudyofReligion,¹⁰ it still forms an important part of that discipline and giventhe apparent ‘resur-