Abstract:

The book is made up of a series of conference papers and previously published essays. No attempt is made at relating the essays, so the reader gets no real sense of structure for the book as a whole or sense of what the author intends the book to accomplish, other than a kind of Bruce Lincoln’s “Recent Hits.” This is not necessarily a critique, unless one thinks that explicitly stated coherence is a requirement of scholarly books. If a red thread can be traced in this very rich assortment it must be found already (and perhaps only) in the title, where we find that the book is about the relationship between Gods, demons, priests, and scholars. The book is very much about the discursive positionality of scholars of religion in relation to their object they study.

Author: Gabriel Levy