Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883–1959), Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Rome and one of the leading historians of religions in the twentieth century, maintained a long correspondence with Herbert Jennings Rose (1883–1961), the gifted Canadian scholar who was Professor of Greek at St Andrews and is best known for his work in the field of ancient religion and folklore. These letters, spanning the years 1927 to 1958, bear witness to the close relationship between the two scholars and focus on two of Pettazzoni’s books, both translated by Rose: Essays on the History of Religions (1954) and The All-Knowing God (1956). They also shed light on Pettazzoni’s initiative to the foundation of the journal NVMEN (1954), and reveal Rose’s brilliant personality.

Nvmen publishes papers representing the most recent scholarship in all areas of the history of religions ranging from antiquity to contemporary history. It covers a diversity of geographical regions and religions of the past as well as of the present. The approach of the journal to the study of religion is strictly non-confessional. While the emphasis lies on empirical, source-based research, typical contributions also address issues that have a wider historical or comparative significance for the advancement of the discipline. Numen also publishes papers that discuss important theoretical innovations in the study of religion and reflective studies on the history of the discipline. Brill is proud to present this special volume of articles compiled to celebrate the occasion of the 60th anniversary of NVMEN: International Review for the History of Religions in 2014. The articles in this volume have been selected under the auspices of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR), and reflect critically on the past, present, and future of NVMEN, the IAHR and the study of the History of Religions.

This book demonstrates how discussions of Political Theology have been a constant feature throughout philosophical modernity and that they continue to impact contemporary political debates. By tracing the historical roots and detailing the contemporary outworking of Political Theology in Europe, it contends that this growing field requires a broader "canon" in order for it to mature. Political Theology is shown here to be about the diversity of relationships between religious beliefs and political orientations. First engaging with historical debates, chapters re-examine the relationship between personal conviction and societal orientation on such topics as the will to believe, evil, individualism, the relationship between church and state, and the relationship between belief and natural science. The volume then establishes the relevance of these debates for the present day. As such, it invites engagement on the back and forth between religion and politics in a liberal democracy and a communist state, on how communitarianism relates to religious language, on the diversity of Christian and Jewish political theology, and the politics of toleration. By broadening out the field of Political Theology this book offers the reader a more nuanced understanding of its sustained influence on public life. As such it will be of interest to academics working in Political Theology, but also Theology, Philosophy and Political Science more generally.

The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religions provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religions. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptualaspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of theways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources (i.e., economy). Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments,distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics.The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile ofthis volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance thestate of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.

The Egyptian Nonnus of Panopolis (5th century AD), author of both the ‘pagan’ Dionysiaca, the longest known poem from Antiquity (21,286 lines in 48 books, the same number of books as the Iliad and Odyssey combined), and a ‘Christian’ hexameter Paraphrase of St John’s Gospel (3,660 lines in 21 books), is no doubt the most representative poet of Greek Late Antiquity. Brill’s Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis provides a collection of 32 essays by a large international group of scholars, experts in the field of archaic, Hellenistic, Imperial, and Christian poetry, as well as scholars of late antique Egypt, Greek mythology and religion, who explore the various aspects of Nonnus’ baroque poetry and its historical, religious and cultural background.

Rediscovering E. R. Dodds offers the first comprehensive assessment of a remarkable classical scholar, who was also a poet with extensive links to twentieth-century English and Irish literary culture, the friend of Auden and MacNeice. Dodds was born in Northern Ireland, but made his name as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford from 1936 to 1960, succeeding Gilbert Murray. Before this he taught at Reading and Birmingham, was active in the Association of University Teachers, or AUT (of which he became president), and brought an outsider's perspective to the comfortable and introspective world of Oxford. His famous book The Greeks and the Irrational (1951) remains one of the most distinguished and visionary works of scholarship of its time, though much less well-known is his long and influential involvement with psychic research and his work for the reconstruction of German education after the Second World War. The contributions to this volume seek to shed light on these less explored areas of Dodds' life and his significance as perhaps the last classicist to play a significant role in British literary culture, as well as examining his work across different areas of scholarship, notably Greek tragedy. A group of memoirs - one by his pupil and former literary executor, Donald Russell, and three by younger friends who knew, visited, and looked after Dodds in his last years - complement this portrait of the influential scholar and poet, offering a glimpse of the man behind the legacy.

The first thematic section of volume 12 of the Archive for Religious History deals with the "names and representations of the gods" in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The second part contains various contributions on theology and cult practices in the Greek and Roman worlds, all with the specific aim of arriving at a more exact understanding of ancient polytheism and a better understanding of cult rituals.