and Christianity in the Balkans and Anatolia, with a focus on apocalyptic
traditions and apocryphal themes in Eastern Christianity.
It was once common for scholars outside of Eastern Europe to note ‘a glaring
lack of information about the study of religion in socialist and communist lands’
(Whaling 1995 [1984]: 233). After 1989 that has changed, and quite drastically.
‘A growing self-consciousness among scholars of religion outside Europe and
North America [is leading] them to explore their own traditions of know-
ledge about religions’ (Alles 2005: 8767). The key issue is, again and as else-
where, especially in Western Europe (Kippenberg 2002: 190–95), the manifold
dimensions of cultural modernity and modernization.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am pleased to thank here professors, colleagues, and friends who kindly
commented upon earlier drafts of this chapter: Piotr Balcerowicz (Warsaw),
Giovanni Casadio (Salerno), Mihály Hoppál (Budapest), Bretislav Horyna
(Prague), Sergii Kapranov (Kiev), Alexander Krasnikov (Moscow), Zmago
·mitek (Ljubliana), Ülo Valk (Tartu), Toon Van Hal (Leuven), and Milan
Vukomanovic (Belgrad). From Paris, London or Bucharest, Mihaela Timus,,
Mihail Neamt,u and Andrei Ois,teanu also helped with comments. Any errors,
of course, are my own.
The present chapter represents an initial attempt to address the study of
religion in eastern Europe. I hope eventually to return to this topic in greater
detail.REFERENCES
Alles, Gregory D. 2005, ‘The study of religion: An overview’, in Lindsay Jones (ed.),
Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edn, pp. 8761–67.
Balcerowicz, Piotr, and Mejor, Marek (eds) 2000, On the Understanding of Other
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Studies to Commemorate the Centenary of the Birth of Stanislaw Schayer
(1899–1941). Warsaw University, Poland, October 7–10, 1999, Warsaw: Studia
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Europe et en Russie, transl. from Russian (V. V. Bartol’d, Istorija izucenija
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Sochineniia, Moscow, 1977, pp. 197–442]) by Boris Nikitine, Paris: Payot.
Bentwick, Norman 1953, The Rescue and Achievement of Refugee Scholars: The
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Nijhoff.68
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